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Book No.

Hux.

ENDS AND MEANS

By Aldous Huxley

*

NOVELS

Eyeless in Ga{a
Brave New World
Point Counter Point
Those Barren Leaves
Antic Hay
Crome Yellow

SHORT STORIES

Brief Candles
Two or Three Graces
Little Mexican
Mortal Coils
Limbo

ESSAYS AND BELLES LETTRES
Music at Night
Vulgarity in Literature
Do What You Will
Proper Studies
Jesting Pilate
Along the Road
On the Margin
Texts and Pretexts
Beyond the Mexique Bay
The Olive Tree

POETRY

The Cicadas
Leda

DRAMA

The World of Light

SELECT WORKS
Rotunda

«

Chatto & Windus

ALDOUS HUXLEY

Ends and Means

An Enquiry

into the Nature of Ideals
and into the Methods employed
for their Realisation

1938

CHATTO & WINDUS

I ONDON

PUBLISHED BY

Chatto & Windus

LONDON

The Macmillan Company
of Canada, Limited

TORONTO

FIRST PUBLISHED : NOVEMBER 8, 1 937
SECOND IMPRESSION .* JANUARY, 1 938
THIRD IMPRESSION : FEBRUARY, X938

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN : ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Contents

Chapter I. GOALS, ROADS AND CONTEMPORARY

STARTING-POINT page i

II. THE NATURE OF EXPLANATION n

m. EFFICACY AND LIMITATIONS OF LARGE-

SCALE SOCIAL REFORM 1 6

IV. SOCIAL REFORM AND VIOLENCE 25

V. THE PLANNED SOCIETY 31

VI. NATURE OF THE MODERN STATE 5 6

VH. CENTRALIZATION AND DECENTRAL¬
IZATION 61

VIH. DECENTRALIZATION AND SELF-

GOVERNMENT 70

IX. WAR 89

X. INDIVIDUAL WORK FOR REFORM 126

XI. INEQUALITY 161

XH. EDUCATION i77

Xni. RELIGIOUS PRACTICES 225

XIV. BELIEFS 2*2

XV. ETHICS 303

INDEX 331

Chapter

GOALS, ROADS AND CONTEMPORARY
STARTING-POINT

ABOUT the ideal goal of human effort there exists in
JLJL our civilization and, for nearly thirty centuries, there
has existed a very general agreement. From Isaiah to
Karl Marx the prophets have spoken with one voice. In
the Golden Age to which they look forward there will be
} liberty, peace, justice and brotherly love. ‘Nation shall no
more lift sword against nation’; ‘the free development of
each will lead to the free development of alT; ‘the world
shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters
cover the sea.’

With regard to the goal, I repeat, there is and for long
has been a very general agreement. Not so with regard
to the roads which lead to that goal. Here unanimity and
certainty give place to utter confusion, to the clash of
contradictory opinions, dogmatically held and acted upon
with the violence of fanaticism.

There are some who believe — and it is a very popular
belief at the present time — that the royal road to a better
Jworld is the road of economic reform. For some, the
short cut to Utopia is military conquest and the hegemony
of one particular nation ; for others, it is armed revolution
and the dictatorship of a particular class. All these think
mainly in terms of social machinery and large-scale organiza¬
tion. There are others, however, who approach the
problem from the opposite end, and believe that desirable
social changes can be brought about most effectively by
changing the individuals who compose society. Of the
A I

ENDS AND MEANS

people who think in this way, some pin their faith to
education, some to psycho-analysis, some to applied
behaviourism. There are others, on the contrary, who
[believe that no desirable ‘change of heart’ can be brought
about without supernatural aid. There must be, they
say, a return to religion. (Unhappily, they cannot agree
on the religion to which the return should be made.)

At this point it becomes necessary to say something
about that ideal individual into whom the changers of
heart desire to transform themselves and others. Every
age and class has had its ideal. The ruling classes in
Greece idealized the magnanimous man, a sort of scholar-
and-gentleman. Kshatriyas in early India and feudal nobles
in mediaeval Europe held up the ideal of the chivalrous
man. The honnete homme makes his appearance as the
ideal of seventeenth-century gentlemen; the philosophe , as
the ideal of their descendants in the eighteenth century.
The nineteenth century idealized the respectable man. The
twentieth has already witnessed the rise and fall of the
liberal man and the emergence of the sheep-like social
man and the god-like Leader. Meanwhile the poor and
downtrodden have always dreamed nostalgically of a man
ideally well-fed, free, happy and unoppressed.

Among this bewildering multiplicity of ideals which
shall we choose? The answer is that we shall choose
none. For it is clear that each one of these contradictory
ideals is the fruit of particular social circumstances. To
some extent, of course, this is true of every thought and
aspiration that has ever been formulated. Some thoughts
and aspirations, however, are manifestly less dependent on
particular social circumstances than others. And here a
significant fact emerges : all the ideals of human behaviour
formulated by those who have been most successful in
freeing themselves from the' preiu3iCes~of 'their time and
place are singularly aliEer Ljberafion from prevailing con-

2

THE CONTEMPORARY STARTING-POINT
ventions of thought, feeling and behaviour is accomplished
xnoiTeHecHvelyby the practice o7 disinterested virtues and
through direct insight into the real nature of ultimate
reality. (Such insight is a gify inherent in_the individual.;
but, though inherent, it_.cannot manifest itselLcompletely
except where certain conditions are fulfilled. The principal
pre-condition of insight is, precisely, the practice oF~3fiT-
interested virtues.) To some extent critical intellect is
also Oberating force. But the way in which intellect is
used depends upon the will. Where the will is not dis¬
interested, the intellect tends to be used (outside the
non-human fields of technology, science or pure mathe¬
matics) merely as an instrument for the rationalization of
passion and prejudice, the justification of self-interest.
That is why so few even of the acutest philosophers have
succeeded in liberating themselves completely from the
narrow prison of their age and country. It is seldom
indeed that they achieve as much freedom as the mystics
and the founders of religion. The most nearly free
men have always been those who combined virtue with
insight.

Now, among these freest of human beings there has
been, for the last eighty or ninety generations, substantial
agreement in regard to the ideal individual. The enslaved
have held up for admiration now this model of a man,
now that; but at all times and in all places, the free have
spoken with only one voice.

It is difficult to find a single word that will adequately
describe the ideal man of the free philosophers, the mystics,
the founders of religions, ‘Non-attached* is perhaps the
best. The ideal man is the non-attached man. Non-
attached to his bodily sensations and lusts. Non-attached
to his craving for power and possessions. Non-attached
to the objects of these various desires. Non-attached to
his anger and hatred; non-attached to his exclusive loves.

3

ENDS AND MEANS

Non-attached to wealth, fame, social position. Non-
attached even to science, art, speculation, philanthropy.
Yes, non-attached even to these. For, like patriotism, in
Nurse Cavell’s phrase, ‘they are not enough.’ Non¬
attachment to self and to what are called ‘the things of
this world’ has always been associated in the teachings of
the philosophers and the founders of religions with attach¬
ment to an ultimate reality greater and more significant
than the self. Greater and more significant than even the
best things that this world has to offer. Of the nature
of this ultimate reality I shall speak in the last chapters
of this book. All that I need do in this place is to point
out that the ethic of non-attachment has always been
correlated with cosmologies that affirm the existence of a
spiritual reality underlying the phenomenal world and im¬
parting to it whatever value or significance it possesses.

Non-attachment is negative only in name. The practice
of non-attachment entails the practice of all the virtues.
It entails the practice of charity, for example; for there
are no more fatal impediments than anger (even ‘righteous
indignation’) and cold-blooded malice to the identification
of the self with the immanent and transcendent more-than-
self. It entails the practice of courage; for fear is a painful
and obsessive identification of the self with its body.
(Fear is negative sensuality, just as sloth is negative malice.)
It entails the cultivation of intelligence; for insensitive
stupidity is a main root of all the other vices. It entails
the practice of generosity and disinterestedness; for avarice
and the love of possessions constrain their victim to
equate themselves with mete things. And so on. It is
unnecessary any further to labour the point, sufficiently
obvious to anyone who chooses to think about the matter,
that non-attachment imposes upon those who would
practise it the adoption of an intensely positive attitude
towards the world.

THE CONTEMPORARY STARTING-POINT

The ideal of non-attachment has been formulated and
systematically preached again and again in the course of
the last three thousand years. We find it (along with
everything else!) in Hinduism. It is at the very heart of
the teachings of the Buddha. For the Chinese the doctrine
is formulated by Lao Tsu. A little later, in Greece, the
ideal of non-attachment is proclaimed, albeit with a certain
pharisaic priggishness, by the Stoics. The Gospel of
Jesus is essentially a gospel of non-attachment to ‘the
things of this world,’ and of attachment to God. What¬
ever may have been the aberrations of organized Chris¬
tianity — and they range from extravagant asceticism to the
most brutally cynical forms of realpolitik — there has been
no lack of Christian philosophers to reaffirm the ideal of
non-attachment. Here is John Tauler, for example, telling
us that ‘ freedom is complete purity and detachment which
seeketh the Eternal; an isolated, a withdrawn being,
identical with God or entirely attached to God.’ Here is
the author of The Imitation , who bids us ‘pass through
many cares as though without care; not after the manner
of a sluggard, but by a certain prerogative of a free mind,
which does not cleave with inordinate affection to any
creature.’ One could multiply such citations almost in¬
definitely. Meanwhile, moralists outside the Christian
tradition have affirmed the need for non-attachment no
less insistently than the Christians. What Spinoza, for
example, calls ‘blessedness’ is simply the state of non¬
attachment; his ‘human bondage,’ the condition of one
who identifies himself with his desires, emotions and
thought-processes, or with their objects in the external
world.

The non-attached man is one who, in Buddhist phrase¬
ology, puts an end to pain; and he puts an end to pain,
not only in himself, but also, by refraining from malicious
and stupid activity, to such pain as he may inflict on

5

ENDS AND MEANS

others. He is the happy or ‘blessed’ man as well as the
good man.

A few moralists — of whom Nietzsche is the most
celebrated and the Marquis de Sade the most uncom¬
promisingly consistent — have denied the value of non¬
attachment. But these men are manifestly victims of their
temperament and their particular social surroundings.
Unable to practise non-attachment, they are unable to
preach it; themselves slaves, they cannot even understand
the advantages of freedom. They stand outside the great
tradition of civilized Asiatic and European philosophy. In
the sphere of ethical thought they are eccentrics. Similarly
such victims of particular social circumstances as Machiavelli,
Hegel and the contemporary philosophers of Fascism and
dictatorial Communism, are eccentrics in the sphere of
political thought.

Such, then, are the ideals for society and for the individual
which were originally formulated nearly three thousand
years ago in Asia, and which those who have not
broken with the tradition of civilization still accept.
In relation to these ideals, what are the relevant con¬
temporary facts? They may be summed up very briefly.
Instead of advancing towards the ideal goal, most of
the peoples of the world are rapidly moving away
from it.

‘Real progress,’ in the words of Dr. R. R. Marett,
‘is progress in charity, all other advances being secondary
thereto.’ In the course of recorded history real progress
has been made by fits and starts. Periods of advance in
charity have alternated with periods of regression. The
eighteenth century was an epoch of real progress. So was
most of the nineteenth, in spite of the horrors of indus¬
trialism, or rather because of the energetic way in which
its men of good will tried to put a stop to those horrors.
The present age is still humanitarian in spots; but where

6

THE CONTEMPORARY STARTING-POINT

major political issues are concerned, it has witnessed a
definite regression in charity.

Thus, eighteenth-century thinkers were unanimous in
condemning the use of torture by the State. Not only is
torture freely used by the rulers of twentieth-century
Europe; there are also theorists who are prepared to
justify every form of State-organized atrocity, from flogging
and branding to the wholesale massacre of minorities and
general war. Another painfully significant symptom is
the equanimity with which the twentieth-century public
responds to written accounts and even to photographs
and moving pictures of slaughter and atrocity. By way of
excuse it may be urged that, during the last twenty years,
people have supped so full of horrors, that horrors no
longer excite either their pity for the victims or their
indignation against the perpetrators. But the fact of
indifference remains; and because nobody bothers about
horrors, yet more horrors are perpetrated.

Closely associated with the regression in charity is the
decline in men’s regard for truth. At no period of the
world’s history has organized lying been practised so
shamelessly or, thanks to modern technology, so efficiently
or on so vast a scale as by the political and economic
dictators of the present century. Most of this organized
lying takes the form of propaganda, inculcating hatred and
vanity, and preparing men’s minds for war. The principal
aim of the liars is the eradication of charitable feelings
and behaviour in the sphere of international politics.

Another point; charity cannot progress towards univer¬
sality unless the prevailing cosmology is either monotheistic
or pantheistic — unless there is a general belief that all men
are ‘the sons of God’ or, in Indian phrase, that ‘thou art
that,’ tat tvam asi. The last fifty years have witnessed
a great retreat from monotheism towards idolatry. The
worship of one God has been abandoned in favour of the

7

ENDS AND MEANS

worship of such local divinities as the nation, the class
and even the deified individual.

Such is the world in which we find ourselves — a world
which, judged by the only acceptable criterion of progress,
is manifestly in regression. Technological advance is
rapid. But without progress in charity, technological
advance is useless. Indeed, it is worse than useless.
Technological progress has merely provided us with more
efficient means for going backwards.

How can the regression in charity through which we
are living, and for which each one of us is in some measure
responsible, be halted and reversed? How can existing
society be transformed into the ideal society described by
the prophets? How can the average sensual man and the
exceptional (and more dangerous) ambitious man be trans¬
formed into those non-attached beings, who alone can
create a society significantly better than our own? These
are the questions which I shall try to answer in the present
volume.

In the process of answering them, I shall be compelled
to deal with a very great variety of subjects. Inevitably;
for human activity is complex, human motivation ex¬
ceedingly mixed. By many writers, this multifariousness
of men’s thoughts, opinions, purposes and actions is
insufficiently recognized. Over-simplifying the problem,
they prescribe an over-simplified solution. Because of this
I have thought it necessary to preface the main arguments
of the book with a discussion of the nature of explanation.
What do we mean when we say that we have ‘explained*
a complex situation? What do we mean when we talk
of one event being the cause of another? Unless we know
the answer to these questions, our speculations regarding
the nature and cure of social disorders are likely to be
incomplete and one-sided.

Our discussion of the nature of explanation brings us

8

THE CONTEMPORARY STARTING-POINT

to the conclusion that causation in human affairs is multiple
— in other words, that any given event has many causes.
Hence it follows that there can be no single sovereign
cure for the diseases of the body politic. The remedy for
social disorder must be sought simultaneously in many
different fields. Accordingly, in the succeeding chapters,
I proceed to consider the most important of these fields of
activity, beginning with the political and economic and
proceeding to the fields of personal behaviour. In every
case I suggest the kind of changes that must be made if
men are to realize the ideal ends at which they all profess
to be aiming. This involves us, incidentally, in a dis¬
cussion of the relation of means to ends. Good ends,
as I have frequently to point out, can be achieved only
by the employment of appropriate means. The end
cannot justify the means, for the simple and obvious
reason that the means employed determine the nature of
the ends produced.

These chapters, from the second to the twelfth, con¬
stitute a kind of practical cookery book of reform. They
contain political recipes, economic recipes, educational
recipes, recipes for the organization of industry, of local
communities, of groups of devoted individuals. They
also contain, by way of warning, descriptions of the way
things ought not to be done — recipes for not realizing
the ends one professes to desire, recipes for stultifying
idealism, recipes for paving hell with good intentions.

This cookery book of reform culminates in the last
section of the book, in which I discuss the relation existing
between the theories and the practices of reformers on the
one hand and the nature of the universe on the other.
What sort of world is this, in which men aspire to good
and yet so frequently achieve evil ? What is the sense
and point of the whole affair? What is man’s place in it
and how are his ideals, his systems of values, related to

9

ENDS AND MEANS

the universe at large? It is with such questions that I
shall deal in the last three chapters. To the ‘practical
man’ they may seem irrelevant. But in fact they are not.
It is in the light of our beliefs about the ultimate nature
of reality that we formulate our conceptions of right and
wrong; and it is in the light of our conceptions of right
and wrong that we frame our conduct, not only in the
relations of private life, but also in the sphere of politics
and economics. So far from being irrelevant, our meta¬
physical beliefs are the finally determining factor in all
our actions. That is why it has seemed to me necessary
to round off my cookery book of practical recipes with a
discussion of first principles. The last three chapters are
the most significant and, even from the purely practical
point of view, the most important in the book.

10

Chapter II

THE NATURE OF EXPLANATION

ABOUT the goal, I repeat, there has for long been
. agreement. We know what sort of society we should
like to be members of and what sort of men and women
we should like to be. But when it comes to deciding how
to reach the goal, the babel of conflicting opinions breaks
loose. Quot homines , tot sententiae . Where ultimate ends
are concerned, the statement is false; in regard to means
it is nearly true. Every one has his own patent medicine,
guaranteed to cure all the ills of humanity; and so
passionate, in many cases, is belief in the efficacy of the
panacea that men are prepared, on its behalf, to kill and to
be killed.

That men should cling so tenaciously to the dogmas
they have invented or accepted, and that they should hate
so passionately the people who have invented or accepted
other dogmas, are facts that can be accounted for only
too easily. Certainty is profoundly comforting, and hatred
pays a high dividend in emotional excitement. It is less
easy, however, to understand why such exclusive doctrines
should ever arise, why the intellect, even when unblinded
by passion, should be ready and even eager to regard
them as true. It is worth while, in this context, to
devote a few lines to the nature of explanation. In
what does the process of explaining consist? And, in
any given explanation, what is the quality which we
find intellectually satisfying? These questions have been
treated with great acuteness and an enormous wealth
of learning by the late Emile Meyerson, from whose

II

ENDS AND MEANS

writings I have, in the ensuing paragraphs, freely
borrowed.1

The human mind has an invincible tendency to reduce
the diverse to the identical. That which is given us,
immediately, by our senses, is multitudinous and diverse.
Our intellect, which hungers and thirsts after explanation,
attempts to reduce this diversity to identity. Any pro¬
position stipulating the existence of an identity underlying
diverse phenomena, or persisting through time and change,
seems to us intrinsically plausible. We derive a deep
satisfaction from any doctrine which reduces irrational
multiplicity to rational and comprehensible unity. To
this fundamental psychological fact is due the existence of
science, of philosophy, of theology. If we were not
always trying to reduce diversity to identity, we should
find it almost impossible to think at all. The world would
be a mere chaos, an unconnected series of mutually
irrelevant phenomena.

The effort to reduce diversity to identity can be, and
generally is, carried too far. This is particularly true in
regard to thinkers who are working in fields not subjected
to the discipline of one of the well-organized natural
sciences. Natural science recognizes the fact that there is
a residue of irrational diversity which cannot be reduced
to the identical and the rational. For example, it admits
the existence of irreversible changes in time. When an
irreversible change takes place, there is not an underlying
identity between the state before and the state after the
change. Science is not only the effort to reduce diversity
to identity; it is also, among other things, the study of
the irrational brute fact of becoming. There are two
tendencies in science; the tendency towards identification
and generalization and the tendency towards the exploration

1 See Du Cheminement de la Pensie and De V Explication dans Us
Sciences, by Emile Meyerson.

12

THE NATURE OF EXPLANATION
of brute reality, accompanied by a recognition of the
specificity of phenomena.

Where thought is not subject to the discipline of one of
the organized sciences, the first tendency — that towards
identification and generalization — is apt to be allowed too
much scope. The result is an excessive simplification. In
its impatience to understand, its hunger and thirst after
explanation, the intellect tends to impose more rationality
upon the given facts than those facts will bear, tends to
discover in the brute diversity of phenomena more identity
than really exists in them — or at any rate more identity
than a man can make use of in the practical affairs of life.
For a being that can take the god’s-eye view of things,
certain diversities display an underlying identity. By the
animal, on the contrary, they must be accepted for what
they seem to be, specifically dissimilar. Man is a double
being and can take, now the god’s-eye view of things,
now the brute’s-eye view. For example, he can affirm
that chalk and cheese are both composed of electrons, both
perhaps more or less illusory manifestations of the Absolute.
Such reduction of the diverse to the identical may satisfy
our hunger for explanation; but we have bodies as well
as intellects, and these bodies have a . hunger for Stilton
and a distaste for chalk. In so far as we are hungry and
thirsty animals, it is important for us to know that there
is a difference between what is wholesome and what is
poisonous. Their reduction to an identity may be all
right in the study; but in the dining-room it is extremely
unhelpful.

Over-simplification in regard to such phenomena as
chalk and cheese, as H20 and H2S04, leads very rapidly
to fatal results; it is rarely therefore that we make such
over-simplifications. There are, however, other classes of
phenomena in regard to which we can over-simplify with
a certain measure of impunity. The penalty for such

*3

ENDS AND MEANS

mistakes is not spectacular or immediate. In many cases,
indeed, the makers of the mistake are not even aware that
they are being punished; for the punishment takes the
form not of a deprivation of a good which they already
possess, but of the withholding of a good which they
might have come to possess if they had not made the
mistake. Consider, by way of example, that once very
common over-simplification of the facts which consists in
making God responsible for all imperfectly understood
phenomena. Secondary causes are ignored and everything
is referred back to the creator. No more wholesale re¬
duction of diversity to identity is possible; and yet its
effect is not immediately perceptible. Those who make
the mistake of thinking in terms of a first cause are fated
never to become men of science. But as they do not
know what science is, they are not aware that they are
losing anything.

To refer phenomena back to a first cause has ceased to
be fashionable, at any rate in the West. The identities to
which we try to reduce the complicated diversities around
us are of a different order. For example, when we discuss
society or individual human beings, we no longer make
our over-simplifications in terms of the will of God, but
of such entities as economics, or sex, or the inferiority
complex. Excessive simplifications! But here again the
penalty for making them is not immediate or obvious.
Our punishment consists in our inability to realize our
ideals, to escape from the social and psychological slough
in which we wallow. We shall never deal effectively with
our human problems until we follow the example of natural
scientists and temper our longing for rational simplification
by the recognition in things and events of a certain residue
or irrationality, diversity and specificity. We shall never
succeed in changing our age of iron into an age of gold
until we give up out ambition to find a single cause for

14

THE NATURE OF EXPLANATION
all our ills, and admit the existence of many causes acting
simultaneously, of intricate correlations and reduplicated
actions and reactions. There is, as we have seen, a great
variety of fanatically entertained opinions regarding the
best way of reaching the desired goal. We shall be well
advised to consider them all. To exalt any single one of
them into an orthodoxy is to commit the fault of over¬
simplification. In these pages I shall consider some of the
means which must be employed, and employed simul¬
taneously, if we are to realize the end which the prophets
and the philosophers have proposed for humanity — a free
and just society, fit for non-attached men and women to
be members of, and such, at the same time, as only non-
attached men and women could organize.

Chapter III

EFFICACY AND LIMITATIONS OF LARGE-
SCALE SOCIAL REFORM

AMONG people who hold what are called ‘advanced
A opinions’ there is a widespread belief that the ends
we all desire can best be achieved by manipulating the
structure of society. They advocate, not a ‘change of
heart’ for individuals, but the carrying through of certain
large-scale political and, above all, economic reforms.

Now, economic and political reform is a branch of what
may be called preventive ethics. The aim of preventive
ethics is to create social circumstances of such a nature that
individuals will not be given opportunities for behaving in
an undesirable, that is to say an excessively ‘attached,’ way.

Among the petitions most frequently repeated by
Christians is the prayer that they may not be led into
temptation. The political and economic reformer aims at
answering that prayer. He believes that man’s environment
can be so well organized, that the majority of temptations
will never arise. In the perfect society, the individual will
practise non-attachment, not because he will be deliberately
and consciously non-attached, but because he will never be
given the chance of attaching himself. There is, it is
obvious, much truth in the reformer’s contention. In
England, for example, far fewer murders are committed
now than were committed in the past. This reduction in
the murder rate is due to a number of large-scale reforms —
to legislation restricting the sale and forbidding the carry¬
ing of arms ; to the development of an efficient legal system
which provides prompt redress to the victims of outrage.

16

LARGE-SCALE SOCIAL REFORM

Nor must we forget the change of manners (itself due to
a great variety of causes) which has led to the disparagement
of duelling and a new conception of personal honour.
Similar examples might be cited indefinitely. Social reforms
have unquestionably had the effects of reducing the number
of temptations into which individuals may be led. (In a
later paragraph, I shall consider the question of the new
temptations which reforms may create.) When the absence
of temptation has been prolonged for some time, an ethical
habit is created; individuals come to think that the evil
into which they are not led is something monstrous and
hardly even thinkable. Generally, they take to themselves
the credit that is really due to circumstances. Consider,
for example, the question of cruelty. In England the
legislation against cruelty to animals and, later, children
and adults, was carried through, against indifference and
even active opposition, by a small minority of earnest
reformers. Removal of the occasions of indulging in and
gloating over cruelty resulted after a certain time in the
formation of a habit of humanitarianism. Thanks to this
habit, Englishmen now feel profoundly shocked by the
idea of cruelty and imagine that they themselves would
be quite incapable of performing or watching cruel acts.
This last belief is probably unfounded. There are many
people who believe themselves to be fundamentally humane
and actually behave as humanitarians, but who, if changed
circumstance offered occasions for being cruel (especially
if the cruelty were represented as a means to some noble
end), would succumb to the temptation with enthusiasm.
Hence the enormous importance of preserving intact any
long-established habit of decency and restraint. Hence the
vital necessity of avoiding war, whether international or
civil. For war, if it is fought on a large scale, destroys
more than the lives of individual men and women ; it shakes
the whole fabric of custom, of law, of mutual confidence,
B 17

ENDS AND MEANS

of unthinking and habitual decency and humaneness, upon
which all forms of tolerable social life are based. The
English are, on the whole, a good-humoured and kindly
people. This is due, not to any extra dose of original
virtue in them, but to the fact that the last successful
invasion of their island took place in 1066 and their last
civil war (a most mild and gentlemanlike affair) in 1688.
It should be noted, moreover, that the kindliness of the
English manifests itself only at home and in those parts
of their empire where there has been for some time no
war or threat of war. The Indians do not find their rulers
particularly kindly. And, in effect, the ethical standards
of Englishmen undergo a profound change as they pass
from the essentially peaceful atmosphere of their own
country into that of their conquered and militarily occupied
Indian Empire. Things which would be absolutely un¬
thinkable at home are not only thinkable, but do-able and
actually done in India. The Amritsar massacre, for example.
Long immunity from war and civil violence can do more
to promote the common decencies of life than any amount
of ethical exhortation. War and violence are the prime
causes of war and violence. A country where, as in Spain,
there is a tradition of civil strife, is far more liable to civil
strife than one in which there exists a long habit of peaceful
co-operation.

We see, then, that large-scale manipulation of the social
order can do much to preserve individuals from temptations
which, before the reforms were made, were ever present
and almost irresistible. So far so good. But we must not
foiget that reforms may deliver men from one set of evils,
only to lead them into evils of another kind. It often
happens that reforms merely have the effect of transferring
the undesirable tendencies of individuals from one channel
to another channel. An old outlet for some particular
wickedness is closed; but a new outlet is opened. The

18

LARGE-SCALE SOCIAL REFORM
wickedness is not abolished; it is merely provided with a
different set of opportunities for self-expression. It would
be possible to write a most illuminating History of Sin,
showing the extent to which the various tendencies to bad
behaviour have been given opportunities in the different
civilizations of the world, enumerating the defects of every
culture’s specific virtues, tracing the successive meta¬
morphoses of evil under changing technological and
political conditions. Consider, by way of example, the
recent history of that main source of evil, the lust for
power, the craving for personal success and dominance.
In this context we may describe the passage from mediaeval
to modern conditions as a passage from violence to cunning,
from the conception of power in terms of military prowess
and the divine right of aristocracy to its conception in terms
of finance. In the earlier period the sword and the patent
of nobility are at once the symbols and the instruments of
domination. In the later period their place is taken by
money. Recently the lust for power has come to express
itself once again in ways that are almost mediaeval. In the
Fascist states there has been a return towards rule by the
sword and by divine right. True, the right is that of self-
appointed leaders rather than that of hereditary aristocrats ;
but it is still essentially divine. Mussolini is infallible;
Hitler, appointed by God. In collectivized Russia a system
of state capitalism has been established. Private ownership
of the means of production has disappeared and it has
become impossible for individuals to use money as a means
for dominating their fellows. But this does not mean that
the lust for power has been suppressed; rather it has been
deflected from one channel to another channel. Under the
new regime the symbol and the instrument of power is
political position. Men seek, not wealth, but a strategic
post in the hierarchy. How ruthlessly they would fight
for these strategic posts was shown during the treason

*9

ENDS AND MEANS

trials of 1936 and 1937. In Russia, and to a certain extent
in* the other dictatorial countries, the situation is very
similar to that which existed in the religious orders, where
position was more important than money. Among the
Communists ambition has been more or less effectively
divorced from avarice, and the lust of power manifests
itself in a form which is, so to say, chemically pure.

This is the cue for smiling indulgently and saying : ‘You
can’t change human nature.’ To which the anthropologist
replies by pointing out that human nature has in fact been
made to assume the most bewilderingly diverse, the most
amazingly improbable forms. It is possible to arrange a
society in such a way that even so fundamental a tendency
as the lust for power cannot easily find expression. Among
the Zuni Indians, for example, individuals are not led into
the kind of temptation which invites the men of our
civilization to work for fame, wealth, social position or
power. By us, success is always worshipped. But among
the Zuiiis it is such bad form to pursue personal distinction
that very few people even think of trying to raise them¬
selves above their fellows, while those who try are regarded
as dangerous sorcerers and punished accordingly. There
are no Hitlers, no Kreugers, no Napoleons and no Calvins.
The lust for power is simply not given an opportunity
for expressing itself. In the tranquil and well-balanced
communities of the Zunis and other Pueblo Indians all
those outlets for personal ambition — the political, the
financial, the military, the religious outlets with which
our own history has made us so painfully familiar —
are closed.

The pattern of Pueblo culture is one which a modern
industrialized society could not possibly copy. Nor, even
if it were possible, would it be desirable that we should
choose these Indian societies as our model. For the
Pueblo Indians’ triumph over the lust for power has been

20

LARGE-SCALE SOCIAL REFORM
secured at an excessive cost. Individuals do not scramble
for wealth and position, as with us; but they purchase
these advantages at a great price. They are weighed
down under a great burden of religious tradition; they
are attached to all that is old and terrified of all that is
novel and unfamiliar; they spend an enormous amount
of time and energy in the performance of magic rites and
the repetition, by rote, of interminable formulas. Using
the language of theology, we can say that the deadly sins
to which we are peculiarly attached are pride, avarice and
malice. Their special attachment is to sloth — above all
to the mental sloth, or stupidity, against which the Buddhist
moralists so insistently warn their disciples. The problem
which confronts us is this: can we combine the merits
of our culture with those of the Pueblo culture ? Can we
create a new pattern of living in which the defects of the
two contrasted patterns, Pueblo-Indian and Western-
Industrial, shall be absent? Is it possible for us to
acquire their admirable habits of non-attachment to wealth
and personal success and at the same time to preserve
our intellectual alertness, our interest in science, our
capacity for making rapid technological progress and
social change?

These are questions which it is impossible to answer
with any degree of confidence. Only experience and
deliberate experiment can tell us if our problem can be
completely solved. All we certainly know is that, up to
the present, scientific curiosity and a capacity for making
rapid social changes have always been associated with
frequent manifestations of the lust for power and the
worship of success.1 As a matter of historical fact,
scientific progressiveness has never been divorced from
aggressiveness. Does this mean that they can never be

1 See in the last chapter the discussion of the relations existing
between enforced sexual continence and social energy.

21

ENDS AND MEANS

divorced? Not necessarily. Every culture is full of
arbitrary and fortuitous associations of behaviour-patterns,
thought-patterns, feeling-patterns. These associations may
last for long periods and are regarded, while they endure,
as necessary, natural, right, inherent in the scheme of
things. But a time comes when, under the pressure of
changing circumstances, these long-standing associations
fall apart and give place to others, which in due course
come to seem no less natural, necessary and right than
the old. Let us consider a few examples. In the richer
classes of mediaeval and early modem European society
there was a very close association between thoughts and
habits concerned with sex and thoughts and habits con¬
cerned with property and social position. The mediaeval
nobleman married a fief, the early-modern bourgeois
married a dowry. Kings married whole countries and,
by judiciously choosing their bedfellows, could build up
an empire. And not only did the wife represent property;
she also was property. The ferocious jealousies which it
was traditionally right and proper to feel, were due at
least as much to an outraged property sense as to a
thwarted sexual passion. Hurt pride and offended avarice
combined with wounded love to produce the kind of
jealousy that could be satisfied only with the blood of
the unfaithful spouse. Meanwhile the faithful spouse was
ornamented and bejewelled, occasionally no doubt out of
genuine affection, but more often and chiefly to gratify the
husband’s desire for self-glorification. The sumptuously
attired wife was a kind of walking advertisement for her
owner’s wealth and social position. The tendency towards
what Veblen calls ‘conspicuous consumption’ came to be
associated in these cultures with the pattern of sexual
behaviour. I have used the past tense in the preceding
passage. But in fact this association of conspicuous con¬
sumption with matrimony — and also with fornication —

22

LARGE-SCALE SOCIAL REFORM
is still characteristic of our societies. In the other
cases, however, there has been a considerable measure of
dissociation. Spouses do not regard one another as
private property to quite the same extent as in the past;
consequently it no longer seems natural and right to
murder an unfaithful partner. The idea of a wholly
gratuitous sexual union, unconnected with dowries and
settlements, is now frequently entertained even among
the rich. Conversely there is a quite general belief that
even married people may be sexually attached to one
another. This was not so in the time of the troubadours;
for, in the words of a recent historian of chivalry, chivalrous
love was ‘ a gigantic system of bigamy.’ Love and marriage
were completely dissociated.

There are many other associations of thought-patterns,
feeling-patterns and action-patterns which have seemed in
their time inevitable and natural, but which at other
times or in other places have not existed at all. Thus,
art has sometimes been associated with religion (as in
Europe during the Middle Ages or among the ancient
Mayas); sometimes, on the other hand, it has not been
associated with religion (as among certain tribes of
American Indians and among Europeans during the last
three centuries). Similarly commerce, agriculture, sex,
eating have sometimes been associated with religion,
sometimes not. There are some societies where almost
all activities are associated with negative emotions, where
it is socially correct and morally praiseworthy to feel
chronically suspicious, envious and malevolent. There
are others in which it is no less right to feel positive
emotions. And so on, almost indefinitely.

Now, it may be that progressiveness and aggressiveness
are associated in the same sort of arbitrary and fortuitous
way as are the various pairs of thought-habits and action-
habits mentioned above. It may be, on the other hand,

23

ENDS AND MEANS

that this association has its roots in the depth of human
psychology and that it will prove very difficult or even
impossible to separate these two conjoined tendencies.
This is a matter about which one cannot dogmatize. All
that one can say with certainty is that the association need
not be quite so complete as it is at present.

Let us sum up and draw our conclusions. First, then,
we see that ‘unchanging human nature’ is not unchanging,
but can be, and very frequently has been, profoundly
changed. Second, we see that many, perhaps most, of
the observed associations of behaviour-patterns in human
societies can be dissociated and their elements reassociated
in other ways. Third, we see that large-scale manipulations
of the social structure can bring about certain ‘changes
in human nature,’ but that these changes are rarely
fundamental. They do not abolish evil; they merely
deflect it into other channels. But if the ends we all desire
are to be achieved, there must be more than a mere
deflection of evil; there must be suppression at the
source, in the individual will. Hence it follows that
large-scale political and economic reform is not enough.
The attack upon our ideal objective must be made, not
only on this front, but also and at the same time on all
the others. Before considering what will have to be done
on these other fronts, I must describe in some detail the
strategy and tactics of attack upon the front of large-scale
reform.

M

Chapter IV

SOCIAL REFORM AND VIOLENCE

‘rT,HE more violence, the less revolution.’ This dictum

x of Barthelemy de Ligt’s is one on which it is profit¬
able to meditate.1

To be regarded as successful, a revolution must be the
achievement of something new. But violence and the
effects of violence — counter-violence, suspicion and resent¬
ment on the part of the victims and the creation, among
the perpetrators, of a tendency to use more violence — are
things only too familiar, too hopelessly unrevolutionary.
A violent revolution cannot achieve anything except the
inevitable results of violence, which are as old as the
hills.

Or let us put the matter in another way. No revolution
can be regarded as successful if it does not lead to progress.
Now, the only real progress, to quote Dr. Marett’s words
once more, is progress in charity. Is it possible to achieve
progress in charity by means that are essentially un¬
charitable? If we dispassionately consider our personal
experience and the records of history, we must conclude
that it is not possible. But so strong is our desire to
believe that there is a short cut to Utopia, so deeply
prejudiced are we in favour of people of similar opinions
to our own, that we are rarely able to command the
necessary dispassion. We insist that ends which we
believe to be good can justify means which we know quite
certainly to be abominable; we go on believing, against

1 See Pour Vaincre sans Violence (English Translation published
by Routledge) and La Paix Criatrice, by B. de Ligt.

*5

ENDS AND MEANS

all the evidence, that these bad means can achieve the
good ends we desire. The extent to which even highly
intelligent people can deceive themselves in this matter is
well illustrated by the following words from Professor
Laski’s little book on Communism. ‘It is patent,’ he
writes, ‘that without the iron dictatorship of the Jacobins,
the republic would have been destroyed.* To anyone who
candidly considers the facts it seems even more patent that
it was precisely because of the iron dictatorship of the
Jacobins that the republic was destroyed. Iron dictator¬
ship led to foreign war and reaction at home. War and
reaction between them resulted in the creation of a military
dictatorship. Military dictatorship resulted in yet more
wars. These wars served to intensify nationalistic senti¬
ment throughout the whole of Europe. Nationalism
became crystallized in a number of new idolatrous religions
dividing the world. (The Nazi creed, for example, is
already implicit and even, to a great extent, fully explicit
in the writings of Fichte.) To nationalism we owe military
conscription at home and imperialism abroad. ‘Without
the iron dictatorship of the Jacobins,’ says Professor
Laski, ‘the republic would have been destroyed.’ A fine
sentiment! Unfortunately there are also the facts. The
first significant fact is that the republic was destroyed and
that the iron dictatorship of the Jacobins was the prime
cause of its destruction. Nor was this the only piece of
mischief for which the Jacobin dictatorship was responsible.
It led to the futile waste and slaughter of the Napoleonic
wars; to the imposition in perpetuity of military slavery,
or conscription , upon practically all the countries of
Canape', wnA Vo the nse o? those nationalistic idolatries
which threaten the existence of our civilization. A fine
record! And yet would-be revolutionaries persist in
believing that, by methods essentially similar to those
employed by the Jacobins, they will succeed in producing

2 6

SOCIAL REFORM AND VIOLENCE
such totally dissimilar results as social justice and peace
between nations.

Violence cannot lead to real progress unless, by way
of compensation and reparation, it is followed by non¬
violence, by acts of justice and good will. In such cases,
however, it is the compensatory behaviour that achieves
the progress, not the violence which that behaviour was
intended to compensate. For example, in so far as the
Roman conquest of Gaul and the British conquest of
India resulted in progress (and it is hard to say whether
they did, and quite impossible to guess whether an equal
advance might not have been achieved without those
conquests), that progress was entirely due to the com¬
pensatory behaviour of Roman and British administrators
after the violence was over. Where compensatory good
behaviour does not follow the original act of violence, as
was the case in the countries conquered by the Turks,
no real progress is achieved. (In cases where violence is
pushed to its limits and the victims are totally exterminated,
the slate is wiped clean and the perpetrators of violence
are free to begin afresh on their own account. This was
the way in which, rejecting Penn’s humaner alternative,
the English settlers in North America solved the Red
Indian problem. Abominable in itself, this policy is
practicable only in underpopulated countries.)

The longer violence has been used, the more difficult
do the users find it to perform compensatory acts of non¬
violence. A tradition of violence is formed; men come
to accept a scale of values according to which acts of
violence are reckoned heroic and virtuous. When this
happens, as it happened, for example, with the Vikings
and the Tartars, as the dictators seem at present to be
trying to make it happen with the Germans, Italians and
Russians, there is small prospect that the effects of violence
will be made good by subsequent acts of justice and kindness.

*7

ENDS AND MEANS

From what has gone before it follows that no reform is
likely to achieve the results intended unless it is, not only
well intentioned, but also opportune. To carry through a
social reform which, in the given historical circumstances,
will create so much opposition as to necessitate the use of
violence is criminally rash. For the chances are that any
reform which requires violence for its imposition will not
only fail to produce the good results anticipated, but will
actually make matters worse than they were before.
Violence, as we have seen, can produce only the effects
of violence; these effects can be undone only by com¬
pensatory non-violence after the event; where violence
has been used for a long period, a habit of violence is
formed and it becomes exceedingly difficult for the per¬
petrators of violence to reverse their policy. Moreover,
the results of violence are far-reaching beyond the wildest
dreams of the often well-intentioned people who resort
to it. The ‘iron dictatorship’ of the Jacobins resulted, as
we have seen, in military tyranny, twenty years of war,
conscription in perpetuity for the whole of Europe, the
rise of nationalistic idolatry. In our own time the long-
drawn violence of Tsarist oppression and the acute,
catastrophic violence of the World War produced the
‘iron dictatorship’ of the Bolsheviks. The threat of
world-wide revolutionary violence begot Fascism; Fascism
produced rearmament; rearmament has entailed the pro¬
gressive de-liberalization of the democratic countries. What
the further results of Moscow’s ‘iron dictatorship’ will be,
time alone will show. At the present moment (June 1937)
the outlook is, to say the least of it, exceedingly gloomy.

If, then, we wish to make large-scale reforms which
will not stultify themselves in the process of application,
we must choose our measures in such a way that no violence
or, at the worst, very little violence will be needed to
enforce them. (It is worth noting in this context that

28

SOCIAL REFORM AND VIOLENCE
reforms carried out under the stimulus of the fear of
violence from foreign neighbours and with the aim of
using violence more efficiently in future international wars
are just as likely to be self-stultifying in the long run as
reforms which cannot be enforced except by a domestic
terror. The dictators have made many large-scale changes
in the structure of the societies they govern without
having had to resort to terrorism. The population gave
consent to these changes because it had been persuaded
by means of intensive propaganda that they were necessary
to make the country safe against ‘foreign aggression.’
Some of these changes have been in the nature of desirable
reforms; but in so far as they were calculated to make the
country more efficient as a war-machine, they tended to
provoke other countries to increase their military efficiency
and so to make the coming of war more probable. But
the nature of modem war is such that it is unlikely that
any desirable reform will survive the catastrophe. Thus
it will be seen that intrinsically desirable reforms, accepted
without opposition, may yet be self-stultifying if the
community is persuaded to accept them by means of
propaganda that plays upon its fear of future violence on
the part of others, or stresses the glory of future violence
when successfully used by itself.) Returning to our main
theme, which is the need for avoiding domestic violence
during the application of reforms, we see that a reform
may be intrinsically desirable, but so irrelevant to the
existing historical circumstances as to be practically useless.
This does not mean that we should make the enormous
mistake committed by Hegel and gleefully repeated by
every modem tyrant with crimes to justify and follies to
rationalize — the mistake that consists in affirming that the
real is the rational, that the historical is the same as the
ideal. The real is not the rational; and whatever is, is not
right. At any given moment of history, the real, as we

29

ENDS AND MEANS

know it, contains certain elements of the rational, laboriously
incorporated into its structure by patient human effort;
among the things that are, some are righter than others.
Accordingly, plain common sense demands that, when
we make reforms, we shall take care to preserve all such
constituents of the existing order as are valuable. Nor is
this all. Change as such is to most human beings more
or less acutely distressing. This being so, we shall do
well to preserve even those elements of the existing order
which are neither particularly harmful nor particularly
valuable, but merely neutral. Human conservatism is a
fact in any given historical situation. Hence it is very
important that social reformers should abstain from making
unnecessary changes or changes of startling magnitude.
Wherever possible, familiar institutions should be extended
or developed so as to produce the results desired; principles
already accepted should be taken over and applied to a
wider field. In this way the amount and intensity of
opposition to change and, along with it, the risk of having
to use measures of violence would be reduced to a
minimum.

30

Chapter V

THE PLANNED SOCIETY

BEFORE the World War only Fabians talked about a
planned society. During the War all the belligerent
societies were planned, and (considering the rapidity with
which the work was done) planned very effectively, for
the purpose of carrying on the hostilities. Immediately
after the War there was a reaction, natural enough in the
circumstance, against planning. The depression produced
a reaction against that reaction, and since 1929 the idea of
planning has achieved an almost universal popularity.
Meanwhile planning has been undertaken, systematically
and on a large scale in the totalitarian states, piecemeal in
the democratic countries. A flood of literature on social
planning pours continuously from the presses. Every
* advanced’ thinker has his favourite scheme, and even
quite ordinary people have caught the infection. Planning
is now in fashion. Not without justification. Our world
is in a bad way, and it looks as though it would be im¬
possible to rescue it from its present plight, much less
improve it, except by deliberate planning. Admittedly
this is only an opinion; but there is every reason to
suppose that it is well founded. Meanwhile, however, it
is quite certain, because observably a fact, that in the pro¬
cess of trying to save our world or part of it from its
present confusion, we run the risk of planning it into the
likeness of hell and ultimately into complete destruction.
There are cures which are worse than disease.

Some kind of deliberate planning is necessary. But which
kind and how much? We cannot answer these questions,

31

ENDS AND MEANS

cannot pass judgment on any given scheme, except by
constantly referring back to our ideal postulates. In con¬
sidering any plan we must ask whether it will help to
transform the society to which it is applied into a just,
peaceable, morally and intellectually progressive com¬
munity of non-attached and responsible men and women.
If so, we can say that the plan is a good one. If not, we
must pronounce it to be bad.

In the contemporary world there are two classes of bad
plans — the plans invented and put into practice by men
who do not accept our ideal postulates, and the plans
invented and put into practice by the men who accept
them, but imagine that the ends proposed by the prophets
can be achieved by wicked or unsuitable means. Hell is
paved with good intentions, and it is probable that plans
made by well-meaning people of the second class may
have results no less disastrous than plans made by the
evil-intentioned people of the first class. Which only
shows, yet once more, how right the Buddha was in
classing unawareness and stupidity among the deadly
sins.

Let us consider a few examples of bad plans belonging
to these two classes. In the first class we must place all
Fascist and all specifically militaristic plans. Fascism, in
the words of Mussolini, believes that ‘war alone brings
up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the
stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage
to meet it.’ Again, ‘a doctrine which is founded upon
the harmful postulate of peace is hostile to Fascism.'
The Fascist, then, is one who believes that the bombard¬
ment of open towns with fire, poison and explosives (in
other words, modern war) is intrinsically good. He is
one who rejects the teaching of the prophets and believes
that the best society is a national society living in a state
of chronic hostility towards other national societies and

3*

THE PLANNED SOCIETY

preoccupied with ideas of rapine and slaughter. He is one
who despises the non-attached individual and holds up for
admiration the person who, in obedience to the boss who
happens at the moment to have grabbed political power,
systematically cultivates all the passions (pride, anger,
envy, hatred) which the philosophers and the founders of
religions have unanimously condemned as the most male¬
ficent, the least worthy of human beings. All Fascist
planning has one ultimate aim: to make the national
society more efficient as a war-machine. Industry, com¬
merce and finance are controlled for this purpose. The
manufacture of substitutes is encouraged in order that the
country may be self-sufficient in time of war. Tariffs and
quotas are imposed, export bounties distributed, exchanges
depreciated for the sake of gaining a momentary advantage
or inflicting loss upon some rival. Foreign policy is con¬
ducted on avowedly Machiavellian principles; solemn
engagements are entered into with the knowledge that they
will be broken the moment it seems advantageous to do
so; international law is invoked when it happens to be
convenient, repudiated when it imposes the least restraint
on the nation’s imperialistic designs. Meanwhile the
dictator’s subjects are systematically educated to be good
citizens of the Fascist state. Children are subjected to
authoritarian discipline that they may grow up to be
simultaneously obedient to superiors and brutal to those
below them. On leaving the kindergarten, they begin
that military training which culminates in the years of
conscription and continues undl the individual is too
decrepit to be an efficient soldier. In school they are
taught extravagant lies about the achievements of their
ancestors, while the truth about other peoples is either
distorted or completely suppressed. The press is con¬
trolled, so that adults may learn only what it suits the
dictator that they should learn. Anyone expressing un-

c 33

ENDS AND MEANS

orthodox opinions is ruthlessly persecuted. Elaborate
systems of police espionage are organized to investigate
the private life and opinions of even the humblest individual.
Delation is encouraged, tale-telling rewarded. Terrorism
is legalized. Justice is administered in secret; the pro¬
cedure is unfair, the penalties barbarously cruel. Brutality
and torture are regularly employed.

Such is Fascist planning — the planning of those who
reject the ideal postulates of Christian civilization and of
the older Asiatic civilizations which preceded it and from
which it derived — the planning of men whose intentions
are avowedly bad. Let us now consider examples of
planning by political leaders who accept the ideal postulates,
whose intentions are good. The first thing to notice is
that none of these men accepts the ideal postulates whole¬
heartedly. All believe that desirable ends can be achieved
by undesirable means. Aiming to reach goals diametrically
opposed to those of Fascism, they yet persist in taking
the same roads as are taken by the Duces and Fuehrers.
They are pacifists, but pacifists who act on the theory that
peace can be achieved by means of war ; they are reformers
and revolutionaries, but reformers who imagine that un¬
fair and arbitrary acts can produce social justice, revolution¬
aries who persuade themselves that the centralization of
power and the enslavement of the masses can result in
liberty for all. Revolutionary Russia has the largest army
in the world; a secret police, that for ruthless efficiency
rivals the German or the Italian; a rigid press censorship;
a system of education that, since Stalin ‘reformed’ it, is as
authoritarian as Hitler’s; an all-embracing system of
military training that is applied to women and children as
well as men; a dictator as slavishly adored as the man-
gods of Rome and Berlin; a bureaucracy, solidly entrenched
as the new ruling class and employing the powers of the State
to preserve its privileges and protect its vested interests;

34

THE PLANNED SOCIETY
an oligarchical party which dominates the entire country
and within which there is no freedom even for faithful
members. (Most ruling castes are democracies so far as
their own members are concerned. Not so the Russian
Communist Party, in which the Central Executive Com¬
mittee, acting through the Political Department, can over¬
ride or altogether liquidate any district organization what¬
soever.) No opposition is permitted in Russia. But
where opposition is made illegal, it automatically goes
underground and becomes conspiracy. Hence the treason
trials and purges of 1936 and 1937. Large-scale manipula¬
tions of the social structure are pushed through against
the wishes of the people concerned and with the utmost
ruthlessness. (Several million peasants were deliberately
starved to death in 1933 by the Soviet planners.) Ruth¬
lessness begets resentment ; resentment must be kept down
by force. As usual the chief result of violence is the
necessity to use more violence. Such then is Soviet
planning — well-intentioned, but making use of evil means
that are producing results utterly unlike those which the
original makers of the revolution intended to produce.

In the bourgeois democratic countries the need for using
intrinsically good means to achieve desirable ends is more
clearly realized than in Russia. But even in these countries
enormous mistakes have been made in the past and still
greater, still more dangerous mistakes are in process of
being committed to-day. Most of these mistakes are due
to the fact that, though professing belief in our ideal
postulates, the rulers and people of these countries are, to
some extent and quite incompatibly, also militarists and
nationalists. The English and the French, it is true, are
sated militarists whose chief desire is to live a quiet life,
holding fast to what they seized in their unregenerate days
of imperial highway-robbery. Confronted by rivals who
want to do now what they were doing from the beginning

35

ENDS AND MEANS

of the eighteenth to the end of the nineteenth century,
they profess and doubtless genuinely feel a profound moral
indignation. Meanwhile, they have begun to address
themselves, reluctantly but with determination, to the task
of beating the Fascist powers at their own game. Like
the Fascist states, they are preparing for war. But modem
war cannot be waged or even prepared except by a highly
centralized executive wielding absolute power over a docile
people. Most of the planning which is going on in the
democratic countries is planning designed to transform
these countries into the likeness of totalitarian com¬
munities organized for slaughter and rapine. Hitherto
this transformation has proceeded fairly slowly. Belief in
our ideal postulates has acted as a brake on fascization,
which has had to advance gradually and behind a smoke¬
screen. But if war is declared, or even if the threat of war
becomes more serious than at present, the process will
become open and rapid. ‘The defence of democracy
against Fascism’ entails inevitably the transformation of
democracy into Fascism.

Most of the essays in large-scale planning attempted by
the democratic powers have been dictated by the desire
o achieve military efficiency. Thus, the attempt to co¬
ordinate the British Empire into a self-sufficient economic
unit was a piece of planning mainly dictated by military
considerations. Still more specifically military in character
have been the plans applied to the armament industries,
not only in Great Britain, but also in France and the other
democratic countries, for the purpose of increasing pro¬
duction. Like the Fascist plans for heightening military
efficiency such essays in planning are bound to make
matters worse, not better. By transforming the British
Empire from a Free Trade area into a private property
protected by tariff walls, the governments concerned have
made it absolutely certain that foreign hostility to the

36

THE PLANNED SOCIETY
Empire shall be greatly increased. While the English
possessed undisputed command of the sea, they con¬
ciliated world opinion by leaving the doors of their
colonies wide open to foreign trade. Now that command
of the sea has been lost, those doors are closed. In other
words, England invites the world’s hostility at the very
moment when it has ceased to be in a position to defy
that hostility. Greater folly could scarcely be imagined.
But those who think in terms of militarism inevitably
commit such follies.

Consider the second case. Rearmament at the present
rate and on the present enormous scale must have one of
two results. Either there will be general war within a
very short time ; for si vis bellum, para helium. Or, if war
is postponed for a few years, the present rate of rearmament
will have to be slowed down and an economic depression
at least as grave as that of 1929 will descend upon the
world. Economic depression will create unrest; unrest
will speed up the fascization of the democratic countries;
the fascization of the democratic countries will increase
the present probability of war to an absolute certainty.
So much for planning undertaken for specifically military
purposes.

Many pieces of planning, however, have not been
specifically military in character. They have been devised
by governments primarily for the purpose of counter¬
acting the effects of economic depression. But, unfor¬
tunately, under the present dispensation, such plans must
be conceived and carried out in the context of militarism
and nationalism. This context imparts to every plan in
the international field a quality that, however good the
intentions of the planners, is essentially militaristic. (Here
it is worth while to enunciate a general truth, which the
older anthropologists, such as Frazer, completely failed to
grasp — the truth that a given habit, rite, tradition takes

37

ENDS AND MEANS

on its peculiar significance from its context. Two peoples
may have what is, according to Frazerian ideas, the same
custom; but this does not mean that the custom in question
will signify the same thing to these two peoples. If the
contexts in which this ‘identical’ custom is placed happen
to be different — as in fact they generally are — then it will
carry widely different significances for the two peoples.
Applying this generalization to our particular problem,
we see that a non-militaristic plan carried out in a militaristic
context is likely to have a significance and results quite
different from the significance and results of the same plan
in a non-militaristic context.)

Owing to the fact that even the democratic peoples are
to some extent militarists and devotees of the idolatry of
exclusive nationalism, almost all the economic planning
undertaken by their governments has seemed to foreign
observers imperialistic in character and has in fact resulted
in a worsening of the international situation. Governments
have used tariffs, export bounties, quotas and exchange
devaluation as devices for improving the lot of their
subjects; in the context of the world as it is to-day, these
plans have seemed to other nations acts of deliberate ill-
will meriting reprisals in kind. Reprisals have led to
counter-reprisals. International exchanges have become
more and more difficult. Consequently yet further planning
has had to be resorted to by each of the governments
concerned for the protection of its own subjects — yet
further planning which arouses yet bitterer resentment
abroad and so brings war yet a little nearer.

We are confronted here by the great paradox of con¬
temporary planning. Comprehensive planning by indi¬
vidual nations results in international chaos, and the
degree of international chaos is in exact proportion to
the number, completeness and efficiency of the separate
national plans.

38

THE PLANNED SOCIETY

During the nineteenth and the first years of the twentieth
century economic exchanges between the nations were
carried on with remarkable smoothness. National econo¬
mies were everywhere unplanned. The individuals who
carried on international trade were forced in their own
interest to conform to the rules of the game, as developed
in the City of London. If they failed to conform, they
were ruined and that was an end of it. Here we have
the converse of the paradox formulated above. National
planlessness in economic matters results in international
economic co-ordination.

We are on the horns of a dilemma. In every country
large numbers of people are suffering privations owing to
defects in the economic machine. These people must be
helped, and if they are to be helped effectively and per-
manendy, the economic machine must be re-planned. But
economic planning undertaken by a national government
for the benefit of its own people inevitably disturbs that
international economic harmony which is the result of
national planlessness. In the process of planning for the
benefit of their respective peoples, national governments
impede the flow of international trade, enter into new
forms of international rivalry and create fresh sources of
international discord. During the last few years most of
the governments of the world have had to choose between
two almost equal evils. Either they could abandon the
victims of economic maladjustment to their fate; but such
a course was shocking to decent sentiment and, since the
sufferers might vote against the government or even break
out into violent revolt, politically dangerous. Or else they
might help the sufferers by imposing a governmental
plan upon the economic activity of their respective coun¬
tries; but in this case they reduced the system of inter¬
national exchanges to chaos and increased the probability
of general war.

39

ENDS AND MEANS

Between the horns of this dilemma a way lies obviously
and invitingly open. The various national governments
can take counsel together and co-ordinate their activities,
so that one national plan shall not interfere with the
workings of another. But, unfortunately, under the present
dispensation, this obvious and eminently sensible course
cannot be taken. The Fascist states do not pretend to
want peace and international co-operation, and even those
democratic governments which make the loudest professions
of pacifism are at the same time nationalistic, militaristic
and imperialistic. Twentieth-century political thinking is
incredibly primitive. The nation is personified as a living
being with passions, desires, susceptibilities. The National
Person is superhuman in size and energy but completely
sub-human in morality. Ordinarily decent behaviour can¬
not be expected of the National Person, who is thought of
as incapable of patience, forbearance, forgiveness and even
of common sense and enlightened self-interest. Men, who
in private life behave as reasonable and moral beings,
become transformed as soon as they are acting as repre¬
sentatives of a National Person into the likeness of their
stupid, hysterical and insanely touchy tribal divinity. This
being so, there is little to be hoped for at the present time
from general international conferences. No scheme of
co-ordinated international planning can be carried through,
unless all nations are prepared to sacrifice some of their
sovereign rights. But it is in the highest degree improbable
that all or even a majority of nations will consent to this
sacrifice.

In these circumstances the best and most obvious road
between the horns of our dilemma must be abandoned in
favour of roads more devious and intrinsically less desirable.
National planning results, as we have seen, in disorder in
the field of international exchanges and political friction.
This state of things can be remedied, at least partially, in

40

THE PLANNED SOCIETY
one or both of two ways. In the first place, schemes of
partial international co-ordination can be arranged between
such governments as can agree upon them. This has
already been done in the case of the Sterling Bloc, which
is composed of countries whose rulers have decided that
it is worth while to co-ordinate their separate national
plans so that they shall not interfere with one another.
There is a possibility that, in due course, other govern¬
ments might find it to their interest to join such a con¬
federation. On this point, however, it is unwise to be too
optimistic. Time may demonstrate the advantages of
international co-operation; but meanwhile time is also
fortifying the vested interests which have been created
under the various national plans. To participate in a
scheme of international co-operation may be to the general
advantage of a nation; but it is certainly not to the advan¬
tage of each one of the particular interests within the
nation. If those particular interests are politically powerful,
the general advantage of the nation as a whole will be
sacrificed to their private advantages.

The second way of reducing international economic
disorder and political friction is more drastic. It consists
in making nations as far as possible economically in¬
dependent of one another. In this way the number of
contacts between nations would be minimized. But since,
in the present state of nationalistic sentiment, international
contacts result only too frequently in international friction
and the risk of war, this reduction in the number of
international contacts would probably mean a lessening of
the probability of war.

To the orthodox Free Trader such a suggestion must seem
grotesque and almost criminal. ‘The facts of geography
and geology are unescapable. Nations are differently
endowed. Each is naturally fitted to perform a particular
task; therefore it is right that there should be division of

41

ENDS AND MEANS

labour among them. Countries should exchange the
commodities they produce most easily against the com¬
modities which they cannot produce or can produce only
with difficulty, but which can be easily produced else¬
where/ So runs the Free Trader’s argument; and an
eminently sensible argument it is — or, perhaps it would
be truer to say, it was. For those who now make use of
it fail to take account of two things: namely, the recent
exacerbation of nationalistic feeling and die progress of
technology. For the sake of prestige and out of fear of
what might happen during war-time, most governments
now desire, whatever the cost and however great the
natural handicaps, to produce within their own territory
as many as possible of the commodities produced more
easily elsewhere. Nor is this all: the progress of technology
has made it possible for governments to fulfil such wishes,
at any rate to a considerable extent, in practice. To the
orthodox Free Trader the ideal of national self-sufficiency
is absurd. But it can already be realized in part and will
be more completely realizable with every advance in
technology. A single national government may be able
to prevent technological discoveries from being developed
in its territories. But it cannot prevent them from being
developed elsewhere ; and when they have been developed,
such advantages accrue that even the most conservative
are forced to adopt the new technique. There can thus be
no doubt that, sooner or later, the devices which already
make it possible for poorly endowed countries to achieve
a measure of self-sufficiency will come into general use.
This being so, it is as well to make a virtue of necessity
and exploit the discoveries of technology systematically
and, so far as possible, for the benefit of all. At present
these technological discoveries are being used by the
dictators solely for war purposes. But there is no reason
why the idea of national self-sufficiency should be associated

42

THE PLANNED SOCIETY

with ideas of war. Science makes it inevitable that all
countries shall soon attain to a considerable degree of self-
sufficiency. This inevitable development should be so
directed as to serve the cause of peace. And, in effect, it
can easily be made to serve the cause of peace. The
influence of nationalistic idolatry is now so strong that
every contact between nations threatens to produce dis¬
cord. Accordingly, the less we have to do with one
another, the more likely are we to keep the peace. Thanks
to certain technological discoveries, it is unnecessary hence¬
forward that we should have much to do with one another.
The more rapidly and the more systematically we make
use of these discoveries, the better for all concerned.

Let us consider by way of example the problem of
food supply. Many governments, including die English,
German, Italian and Japanese, excuse their preparations for
war, their possession of colonies or their desire, if they
do not possess colonies, for new conquests, on the ground
that their territories are insufficient to supply the in¬
habitants with food. At the present time this ‘natural’
food shortage is intensified by an artificial shortage, due
to faulty monetary policies, which prevent certain countries
from acquiring food-stuffs from abroad. These faulty
monetary policies are the result of militarism. The govern¬
ments of the countries concerned choose to spend all the
available national resources for the purchase of armaments
— on guns rather than butter. Food cannot be bought
because the country is preparing to go to war; the country
must go to war because food cannot be bought. As usual,
it is a vicious circle.

Faulty monetary policy may prevent certain nations
from buying food from abroad. But even if this policy
were altered, it would still remain true that food must be
obtained from foreign sources. In relation to existing
home supplies, such countries as Great Britain, Germany

43

ENDS AND MEANS

and Japan are over-populated. Hence, according to the
rulers of these countries, the need for new aggression or,
where aggression was practised in the past, for the main¬
tenance of long-established empires. To what extent is
over-population a valid excuse for militarism and im¬
perialism? According to experts trained in the techniques
of modem agro-biology, imperialism has now lost one of
its principal justifications. Readers are referred to Dr.
Willcox’s book, Nations can live at Home , for a systematic
exposition of the agro-biologist’s case. According to
Dr. Willcox, any country which chooses to apply the most
advanced methods to the production of food plants,
including grasses for live-stock, can support a population
far in excess of the densest population existing anywhere
on the earth’s surface at the present time. The methods
outlined by Dr. Willcox have already been used com¬
mercially. The novel system of ‘dirtless farming’ devised
by Professor Gericke of California is still in the experi¬
mental stage; but if it turns out to be satisfactory, it
promises a larger supply of food, produced with less
labour and on a smaller area, than any other method can
offer. It seems probable, indeed, that ‘dirtless farming’
will produce an agricultural revolution compared to which
the industrial revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries will seem the most trifling of social disturbances.1
Profitable technological inventions cannot be suppressed.
If Professor Gericke’s discovery turns out to be com¬
mercially useful, it will certainly be used. Solely in the
interests of the farming community, governments will be
forced to control the commercial exploitation of this
revolutionary discovery. In the process of controlling it

1 In the report of the Commission appointed by President Roose¬
velt to consider probable future trends, ‘dirtless farming’ was listed
among the thirteen inventions likely to cause important social changes
in the near future. The report was issued in July 1937.

44

THE PLANNED SOCIETY

for the sake of the farmers, they can also control it in the
interests of world peace. Even if ‘dirtless farming’ should
not turn out to be a commercial proposition, nations, in
Dr. Willcox’s phrase, can still ‘live at home,’ and live
(if the birth-rate does not sharply rise) in a hitherto un¬
precedented plenty. It is profoundly significant that no
government has hitherto made any serious effort to apply
modem agro-biological methods on a large scale, for the
purpose of raising the standard of material well-being
among its subjects and of rendering imperialism and
foreign conquest superfluous. This fact alone would be
a sufficient demonstration of the truth that the causes of
war are not solely economic, but psychological. People
prepare for war, among other reasons, because war is in
the great tradition; because war is exciting and gives them
certain personal or vicarious satisfactions; because their
education has left them militaristically minded; because
they live in a society where success, however achieved, is
worshipped and where competition seems more ‘natural’
(because, under the present dispensation, it is more habitual)
than co-operation. Hence the general reluctance to embark
on constructive policies, directed towards the removal at
least of the economic causes of war. Hence, too, the
extraordinary energy which rulers and even the ruled put
into such destructive and war-provoking policies as re¬
armament, the centralization of executive power and the
regimentation of the masses.

I have spoken hitherto of the international consequences
of national planning and of the measures which planners
should take in order to minimize such consequences. In
the ensuing paragraphs I shall deal with planning in its
domestic aspects. Others have written, at great length
and in minute detail, about the strictly technical problems
of planning, and for a discussion of these problems I must
refer the readers to the already enormous literature of the

41

ENDS AND MEANS

subject.1 In this place I propose to discuss planning in
relation to our ideal postulates and to set forth the con¬
ditions which must be fulfilled if the plans are to be
successful in contributing towards the realization of those
ideals.

In the section on Social Reform and Violence I made it
clear that most human beings are conservative, that even
desirable changes beget opposition, and that no plan which
has to be imposed by great and prolonged violence is ever
likely to achieve the desirable results expected of it. From
this it follows, first, that only strictly necessary reforms
should be undertaken; second, that no change to which
there is likely to be widespread and violent opposition
should be imposed, however intrinsically desirable it may
be, except gradually and by instalments ; and, thirdly, that
desirable changes should be made, wherever possible, by
the application to wider fields of methods with which
people are already familiar and of which they approve.

Let us apply these general principles to particular
examples of social planning, and first of all to the great
arch-plan of all reformers: the plan for transforming a
capitalist society, in which the profit motive predominates,
into a socialist society, in which the first consideration is
the common good.

Our first principle is that only strictly necessary changes
shall be carried out. If we wish to transform an advanced
capitalist society, what are the changes that we cannot
afford not to make? The answer is clear: the necessary,
the indispensable changes are changes in the management
of large-scale production. At present the management
of large-scale production is in the hands of irresponsible
individuals seeking profit. Moreover, each large unit is

1 Planned Society, by Thirty-five Authors (New York, 1937),
contains authoritative summaries of almost all aspects of planning,
together with full bibliographies.

46

THE PLANNED SOCIETY

independent of all the rest; there is a complete absence of
co-ordination between them. It is the unco-ordinated
activity of large-scale production that leads to those
periodical crises and depressions which inflict such untold
hardship upon the working masses of the people in indus¬
trialized countries. Small-scale production carried on by
individuals who own the instruments with which they
personally work is not subject to periodical slumps.
Furthermore, the ownership of the means of small-scale,
personal production has none of the disastrous political,
economic and psychological consequences of large-scale
production — loss of independence, enslavement to an
employer, insecurity of the tenure of employment. The
advantages of socialism can be obtained by making changes
in the management of large-scale units of production.
Small units of production need not be touched. In this
way, many of the advantages of individualism can be
preserved and at the same time opposition to indispensable
reforms will be minimized.

Our second principle is that no reform, however in¬
trinsically desirable, should be undertaken if it is likely
to result in violent opposition. For example, let us assume
(though it may not in fact be true) that collectivized
agriculture is more productive than individualized agri¬
culture and that the collectivized farm worker is, socially
speaking, a better individual than the small farmer who
owns his own land. This granted, it follows that the
collectivization of agriculture is an intrinsically desirable
policy. But though intrinsically desirable it is not a
policy that should be carried out, except perhaps by slow
degrees. Carried out at one stroke, it would inevitably
arouse violent opposition, which would have to be crushed
by yet greater violence. In Russia the rapid collectivization
of agriculture could not be effected except by the liquida¬
tion, through imprisonment, execution and wholesale

47

ENDS AND MEANS

starvation, of a very large number of peasant proprietors.
It is probable that a part, at least, of what is now (1937)
called the Trotskyite opposition is composed of individuals
who bear the government a grudge for this and other
pieces of terrorism. To put down opposition, the govern¬
ment has had to resort to further violence, has had to
make itself (to use Professor Laski’s euphemistic metal¬
lurgical metaphor) even more of an ‘iron dictatorship’
than it was before. This further violence and this, shall
we call it, high-speed steel dictatorship can only produce
the ordinary results of brutality and tyranny — servitude,
militarism, passive obedience, irresponsibility. Among the
highly industrialized peoples of the West the collectivization
of agriculture would have even more serious results than
in Russia. Instead of being in an overwhelming majority,
the peasants and farmers of Western Europe and America
are less numerous than the town dwellers. Being less
numerous, they are more precious. To liquidate, even to
antagonize, any large number of this indispensable minority
would be fatal to the people of the towns. A few millions
of peasants could be starved in Russia and still, because
there were so many millions of other peasants, the urban
population could be fed. In countries like France or
Germany, England or the United States, a policy of
starving even quite a few peasants and farmers would
inevitably result in the starving of huge numbers of urban
workers.

The last of the three general principles of action enun¬
ciated above is to the effect that desirable changes should
be made, wherever possible, by the application to wider
fields of methods with which people are already familiar
and of which they approve. A few concrete examples of
the way in which existing institutions might be developed
so as to bring about desirable changes in capitalistic
societies are given below. The principle of the limitation

48

THE PLANNED SOCIETY

of profit and of supervision by the state in the public in¬
terest has already been admitted and applied in such public
utility corporations as the Port of London Authority, the
Port of New York Authority, the London Passenger
Transport Board, the Electricity Board, the B.B.C.1 There
should be no insuperable difficulty in extending the appli¬
cation of this already accepted principle to wider fields.
Similarly there should be no great difficulty in extending
the application of the popularly approved principles of
consumer co-operation and producer co-operation. Again,
consider the existing forms of taxation. In almost all
countries the rich have accepted the principle of income
tax and death duties. By any government which so
desires, such taxation can be used for the purpose of
reducing economic inequalities between individuals and
classes, for imposing a maximum wage and for transferring
control over large-scale production and finance from private
hands to the state. One last example: the investment
trust is a well-known and widely patronized financial
convenience. Under the present dispensation the invest¬
ment trust is a private, profit-making concern. There
would, however, be no great technical or political obstacle
in the way of transforming it into a publicly controlled
corporation, having as its function the rational direction of
the flow of investment.

I have spoken of intrinsically desirable reforms ; but the
phrase is crude and needs qualifying. In practice, no
reform can be separated from its administrative, govern¬
mental, educational and psychological contexts. The tree
is known by its fruits, and the fruits of any given
reform depend for their quantity and quality at least as

1 In some cases these corporations have had to take responsibility
for over-capitalized concerns. In others the minimum interest rate
has been fixed too high. These mistakes do not invalidate the
principle involved.

D

49

ENDS AND MEANS

much on the contexts of the reform as upon the reform
itself.

For example, collective ownership of the means of
production does not have as its necessary and unconditional
result the liberation of those who have hitherto been
bondmen. Collective ownership of the means of pro¬
duction is perfectly compatible, as we see in contemporary
Russia, with authoritarian management of factories and
farms, with militarized education and conscription, with
the rule of a dictator, supported by an oligarchy of party
men and making use of a privileged bureaucracy, a censored
press and a huge force of secret police. Collective owner¬
ship of the means of production certainly delivers the
workers from their servitude to many petty dictators —
landlords, money-lenders, factory owners and the like.
But if the contexts of this intrinsically desirable reform
are intrinsically undesirable, then the result will be, not
responsible freedom for the workers, but another form of
passive and irresponsible bondage. Delivered from servi¬
tude to many small dictators, they will find themselves
under the control of the agents of a single centralized
dictatorship, more effective than the old, because it wields
the material powers and is backed by the almost divine
prestige of the national state.

The contexts of reform are more desirable in the demo¬
cratic than in the totalitarian states; therefore the results
of reform are likely to be better in the democratic states.
Unhappily, contemporary circumstances are such that,
unless the process is intelligently and actively resisted by
men of good will, it is all but inevitable that these desirable
contexts shall rapidly deteriorate. The reasons for this are
simple. First of all, even the democratic peoples are
imperialists and desire to beat the Fascist states at their
own game of war. In order to prepare effectively for
modem war, political power will have to be more highly

50

THE PLANNED SOCIETY
centralized, self - governing institutions progressively
abolished, opinion more strictly controlled and education
militarized. In the second place, the democratic countries
are still suffering to some extent from the economic de¬
pression which started in 1929. The various governments
concerned have resorted to a measure of economic planning
in order to mitigate the hardships suffered by their peoples.
Economic planning has given these governments an oppor¬
tunity for strengthening their position. In England, for
example, the central executive, the bureaucracy and the
police are probably more powerful to-day than they have
ever been. But the more powerful these forces become
the less are they able to tolerate democratic liberty — even
the small amount of it which exists among the so-called
democratic peoples. Another point: economic planning
inevitably leads to more economic planning, for the simple
reason that the situation is so complex that planners cannot
fail to make mistakes. Mistakes have to be remedied by
the improvization and rapid enforcement of new plans.
It is probable that these new plans will also contain mistakes,
which must in turn be remedied by yet other plans. And
so on. Now, where planning has come to be associated
with an increase in the power of the executive (and un¬
fortunately this has been the case in all the democratic
countries), every fresh access of planning activity, necessi¬
tated by mistakes in earlier plans, takes the country yet
another step towards dictatorship. At the same time, as
we have seen, comprehensive national planning leads to
international chaos and consequent discord. In other
words, national planning increases the risk of war; but
war cannot be waged, or even prepared for, except by a
highly centralized government. It will thus be seen that
both directly and indirectly economic planning leads to
a deterioration of the contexts in which desirable reform
can be carried out.

51

ENDS AND MEANS

In the chapters that follow I shall concentrate almost
exclusively on the desirable contexts of reform. My reasons
for this are simple. ‘Advanced thinkers* have talked and
written at endless length about the desirable reforms,
especially economic reforms. All of us have heard of the
public ownership of the means of production ; production
for use and not for profit; public control of finance and
investment, and all the rest. All of us, I repeat, have
heard of these ideas and most of us are agreed that they
ought to be transferred from the realm of theory to that
of fact. But how few of us ever pay any attention to the
administrative, educational and psychological contexts in
which the necessary reforms are to be carried out! How
few of us ever stop to consider the means whereby they
shall be enforced! And yet our personal experience and
the study of history make it abundantly clear that the
means whereby we try to achieve something are at least
as important as the end we wish to attain. Indeed, they
are even more important. For the means employed in¬
evitably determine the nature of the result achieved;
whereas, however good the end aimed at may be, its
goodness is powerless to counteract the effects of the bad
means we use to reach it. Similarly, a reform may be in
the highest degree desirable; but if the contexts in which
that reform is enacted are undesirable, the results will
inevitably be disappointing. These are simple and obvious
truths. Nevertheless they are almost universally neglected.
To illustrate these truths and to show how we might
profitably act upon them will be my principal task in the
ensuing pages.

5*

THE PLANNED SOCIETY

A Note on Planning for the Future

Communities in which technological progress is being
made are subject to continuous social change. Social changes
caused by the advance of technology are often accompanied
by much suffering and inconvenience. Can this be avoided ?

A committee was recently appointed by the President
of the United States to consider this question. Its report
(referred to above) was made public in the summer of
1937 and is a very valuable document.

In the field of industry, the authors point out, techno¬
logical progress never leads to any social changes which
cannot be foreseen a good many years in advance. In
most cases the first discovery of a new process is separated
from its large-scale commercial application by at least a
quarter of a century. (Often this period is considerably
greater.) Any community which chooses to make use of
the intelligence and imagination of its best scientific minds
can foresee the probable social consequences of a given
technological advance long years before they actually
develop. Up to the present social changes due to techno¬
logical progress have taken communities, by surprise, not
because they came suddenly, out of the blue, but because
nobody in authority ever took the trouble to think out in
advance what such changes were likely to be, or what
were the best methods of preventing them from causing
avoidable suffering. President Roosevelt’s commission has
pointed out what are the recent inventions most likely to
cause important social changes in the immediate future,
and has suggested a design for the administrative machinery
required to minimize their ill effects. The problem, in this
case, is purely a problem for technicians.

There is one field in which very small technological
advances may produce disproportionately great effects upon

53

ENDS AND MEANS

society; I refer to the field of armament manufacture.
A slight change, for example, in the design of internal-
combustion engines — so slight as to have no appreciable
effect on the numbers of men employed in their con¬
struction — may bring (and indeed has actually brought)
millions of innocent men, women and children a long step
nearer to death by fire, poison and explosion. In this case,
of course, the problem is not one for technicians; it is a
problem that can be solved only when sufficient numbers
of men of good will are prepared to make use of the
methods by which, and by which alone, it can be solved.
For the nature of these methods I must refer the reader
to the chapters on War and Individual Work for Reform.

Rises and falls in the birth-rate are likely to produce
social changes even more far-reaching than those produced
by technological advances. It is about as certain as any
future contingency can be that, half a century from now,
the population of the industrialized countries of Western
Europe will have declined, both absolutely and in relation
to that of the countries of Eastern Europe. Thus, when
Great Britain has only thirty-five million inhabitants, of
whom less than a tenth will be under fifteen and more
than a sixth over sixty, Russia will have about three hundred
millions. Will a country so (relatively speaking) sparsely
inhabited as the Britain of 1990 be able to keep up its
position as a ‘First-class, Imperial Power’? In the past
Sweden, Portugal and Holland attempted to keep up the
status of a Great Power on the basis of a population that
was absolutely and relatively small. All of them failed in
the attempt. If only for demographical reasons, Britain
should take all possible steps to avoid a struggle for
imperial power which, if not immediately fatal, will almost
certainly prove fatal a couple of generations hence. In a
militaristic world, relatively under-populated countries
cannot hope (unless protected by more powerful neigh-

54

THE PLANNED SOCIETY

hours) to retain exclusive possession of large empires.
British imperialism was all very well when Britain was,
relatively, highly populous and, thanks to being an island,
invulnerable. For an exceedingly vulnerable and relatively
underpopulated Britain, imperialism is the policy of a
lunatic. (See Griffin’s An Alternative to Rearmament ,
London, 1936.)

Here again the problem raised by a declining birth-rate
is not a problem for technicians. It is part of the general
problem of international politics and war, and can be
solved only when sufficient numbers of people genuinely
desire to solve it and are ready to take the appropriate
steps for doing so.

55

Chapter VI

NATURE OF THE MODERN STATE

FOR our present purposes, the significant facts about
the governments of contemporary nations are these.
There are a few rulers and many ruled. The rulers are
generally actuated by love of power; occasionally by a
sense of duty to society; more often and bewilderingly,
by both at once. Their principal attachment is to pride, with
which are often associated cruelty and avarice. The ruled, for
the most part, quietly accept their subordinate position and
even actual hardship and injustice. In certain circumstances
it happens that they cease to accept and there is a revolt.
But revolt is the exception ; the general rule is obedience.

The patience of common humanity is the most important,
and almost the most surprising, fact in history. Most men
and women are prepared to tolerate the intolerable. The
reasons for this extraordinary state of things are many
and various. There is ignorance, first of all. Those who
know of no state of affairs other than the intolerable are
unaware that their lot might be improved. Then there
is fear. Men know that their life is intolerable, but
are afraid of the consequences of revolt. The existence
of a sense of kinship and social solidarity constitutes
another reason why people tolerate the intolerable.
Men and women feel attached to the society of which
they are members — feel attached even when the rulers of
that society treat them badly. It is worthy of remark
that, in a crisis, the workers (who are the ruled) have
always fought for their respective nations (ue. for their
rulers) and against other workers.

56

NATURE OF THE MODERN STATE

Mere habit and the force of inertia are also extremely
powerful. To get out of a rut, even an uncomfortable rut,
requires more effort than most people are prepared to make.
In his Studies in History and Jurisprudence Bryce suggests
that the main reason for obedience to law is simply
indolence. ‘It is for this reason,’ he says, ‘that a strenuous
and unwearying will sometimes becomes so tremendous a
power . . . almost a hypnotic force.’ Because of indolence,
the disinherited are hardly less conservative than the pos¬
sessors; they cling to their familiar miseries almost as
tenaciously as the others cling to their privileges. The
Buddhist and, later, the Christian moralists numbered sloth
among the deadly sins. If we accept the principle that
the tree is to be judged by its fruits, we must admit that
they were right. Among the many poisonous fruits of
sloth are dictatorship on the one hand and passive,
irresponsible obedience on the other. Reformers should
aim at delivering men from the temptations of sloth no
less than from the temptations of ambition, avarice and
the lust for power and position. Conversely, no reform
which leaves the masses of the people wallowing in the
slothful irresponsibility of passive obedience to authority
can be counted as a genuine change for the better.1

Reinforcing the effect of indolence, kindliness and fear,
rationalizing these emotions in intellectual terms, is philo¬
sophical belief. The ruled obey their rulers because, in
addition to all the other reasons, they accept as true some
metaphysical or theological system which teaches that the
state ought to be obeyed and is intrinsically worthy of
obedience. Rulers are seldom content with the brute facts
of power and satisfied ambition ; they aspire to rule de jure
as well as de facto. The rights of violence and cunning
are not enough for them. To strengthen their position in

1 For the relation existing between energy and sexual continence,
see Chapter XV.

57

ENDS AND MEANS

relation to the ruled and at the same time to satisfy their
own uneasy cravings for ethical justification, they try to
show that they rule by right divine. Most theories of
the state are merely intellectual devices invented by
philosophers for the purpose of proving that the people
who actually wield power are precisely the people who
ought to wield it. Some few theories are fabricated by
revolutionary thinkers. These last are concerned to prove
that the people at the head of their favourite political
party are precisely the people who ought to wield power —
to wield it just as ruthlessly as the tyrants in office at
the moment. To discuss such theories is mainly a waste
of time; for they are simply beside the point, irrelevant
to the significant facts. If we wish to think correctly
about the state, we must do so as psychologists, not as
special pleaders, arguing a case for tyrants or would-be
tyrants. And if we want to make a reasonable assessment
of the value of any given state, we must judge it in terms
of the highest morality we know — in other words, we
must judge it in the light of the ideal postulates formulated
by the prophets and the founders of religions. Hegel,
it is true, regarded such judgments as extremely ‘shallow.’
But if profundity leads to Prussianism, as it did in Hegel’s
case, then give me shallowness. Let those who will,
be tief; I prefer superficiality and the common decencies.
We shall understand nothing of the problems of govern¬
ment unless we come down to psychological facts and
ethical first principles.

To a greater or less degree, then, all the civilized
communities of the modern world are made up of a small
class of rulers, corrupted by too much power, and of a
large class of subjects, corrupted by too much passive and
irresponsible obedience. Participation in a social order
of this kind makes it extremely difficult for individuals
to achieve that non-attachment in the midst of activity,

58

NATURE OF THE MODERN STATE
which is the distinguishing mark of the ideally excellent
human being; and where there is not at least a consider¬
able degree of non-attachment in activity, the ideal society
of the prophets cannot be realized. A desirable social
order is one that delivers us from avoidable evils. A bad
social order is one that leads us into temptation which,
if matters were more sensibly arranged, would never arise.
Our present business is to discover what large-scale social
changes are best calculated to deliver us from the evils of
too much power and of too much passive and irresponsible
obedience. It has been shown in the preceding chapter
that the economic reforms, so dear to ‘advanced thinkers,’
are not in themselves sufficient to produce desirable changes
in the character of society and of the individuals composing
it. Unless carried out by the right sort of means and in the
right sort of governmental, administrative and educational
contexts, such reforms are either fruitless or actually fruitful
of evil. In order to create the proper contexts for economic
reform we must change our machinery of government, our
methods of public administration and industrial organiza¬
tion, our system of education and our metaphysical and
ethical beliefs. With education and beliefs I shall deal in
a later section of this book. Our concern here is with
government and the administration of public and industrial
affairs. In reality, of course, these various topics are
inseparable parts of a single whole. Existing methods of
government and existing systems of industrial organization
are not likely to be changed except by people who have
been educated to wish to change them. Conversely, it is
unlikely that governments composed as they are to-day
will change the existing system of education in such a
way that there will be a demand for a complete overhaul
of governmental methods. It is the usual vicious circle
from which, as always, there is only one way of escape —
through acts of free will on the part of morally enlightened,

59

ENDS AND MEANS

intelligent, well-informed and determined individuals, acting
in concert. Of the necessity for the voluntary association
of such individuals and of the enormously important part
that they can play in the changing of society I shall speak
later. For the moment, let us consider the machinery
of government and industrial administration.

6o

Chapter VII

CENTRALIZATION AND DECENTRALIZATION

WE have found agreement in regard to the ideal
society and the ideal human being. Among the
political reformers of the last century we even find a
measure of agreement about the best means of organizing
the state so as to achieve the ends which all desire.
Philosophic Radicals, Fourierists, Proudhonian Mutualists,
Anarchists, Syndicalists, Tolstoyans — all agree that authori¬
tarian rule and an excessive concentration of power are
among the main obstacles in the way of social and individual
progress. Even the Communists express at least a theoretical
dislike of the centralized, authoritarian state. Marx described
the state as a ‘parasite on society* and looked forward to
the time, after the revolution, when it would automatically
‘wither away.’ Meanwhile, however, there was to be the
dictatorship of the proletariat and an enormous increase in
the powers of the central executive. The present Russian
state is a highly centralized oligarchy. Its subjects, children
and women as well as men, are regimented by means of
military conscription, and an efficient secret police system
takes care of people when they are not actually serving
in the army. There is a censorship of the press, and the
educational system, liberalized by Lenin, has now reverted
to the authoritarian, militaristic type, familiar in Tsarist
Russia, in the Italy of Mussolini, in Germany before the
war and again under Hitler. We are asked by the sup¬
porters of Stalin’s government to believe that the best and
shortest road to liberty is through military servitude;
that the most suitable preparation for responsible self-

61

ENDS AND MEANS

government is a tyranny employing police espionage,
delation, legalized terrorism and press censorship; that
the proper education for future freemen and peace-lovers
is that which was and is still being -used by Prussian
militarists.

Our earth is round, and it is therefore possible to travel
from Paris to Rouen via Shanghai. Our history, on the
contrary, would seem to be flat. Those who wish to
reach a specific historical goal must advance directly
towards it ; no amount of walking in the opposite direction
will bring them to their destination.

The goal of those who wish to change society for the
better is freedom, justice and peaceful co-operation between
non-attached, yet active and responsible individuals. Is
there the smallest reason to suppose that such a goal can
be reached through police espionage, military slavery, the
centralization of power, the creation of an elaborate political
hierarchy, the suppression of free discussion and the
imposition of an authoritarian system of education?
Obviously and emphatically, the answer is No.

Marx believed that, after the revolution, the state would,
in due course, automatically wither away. This is a point
worth considering in some detail. In any given society,
as Marx himself pointed out, the state exists, among other
reasons, for the purpose of ensuring to the ruling class the
continuance of its privileges. Thus, in a feudal community
the state is the instrument by means of which the landed
nobility keeps itself in power. Under capitalism, the state
is the instrument by means of which the bourgeoisie
retains its right to rule and to be rich. Similarly, under
a hierarchical system of state Socialism, the state is the
instrument by means of which the ruling bureaucracy
defends the position to which it has climbed. The more
firmly you consolidate your hierarchy, the more tenaciously
will its members cling to their privileges. A highly

6r

CENTRALIZATION AND DECENTRALIZATION
centralized dictatorial state may be smashed by war or
overturned by a revolution from below; there is not the
smallest reason to suppose that it will wither. Dictatorship
of the proletariat is in actual fact dictatorship by a small
privileged minority; and dictatorship by a small privileged
minority does not lead to liberty, justice, peace and the
co-operation of non-attached, but active and responsible
individuals. It leads either to more dictatorship, or to war,
or to revolution, or (more probably) to all three in fairly
rapid succession.

No, the political road to a better society (and do not
let us forget that, if we would reach the goal, we must
advance along many other roads as well as the political)
is the road of decentralization and responsible self-
government. Dictatorial short cuts cannot conceivably
take us to our destination. We must march directly
towards the goal; if we turn our backs to it we shall
merely increase the distance which separates us from the
place to which we wish to go.

The political road to a better society is, I repeat, the road
of decentralization and responsible self-government. But
in present circumstances it is extremely improbable that
any civilized nation will take that road. It is extremely
improbable for a simple reason which I have stated before
and which I make no excuse for repeating. No society
which is preparing for war can afford to be anything but
highly centralized. Unity of command is essential, not
only after the outbreak of hostilities, but also (in the
circumstances of contemporary life) before. A country
which proposes to make use of modem war as an instrument
of policy must possess a highly centralized, all-powerful
executive. (Hence the absurdity of talking about the
defence of democracy by force of arms. A democracy
which makes or even effectively prepares for modem,
scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic.

63

ENDS AND MEANS

No country can be really well prepared for modem war
unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly
trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.)

I have said that a country which proposes to make use
of modem war as an instrument of policy must possess a
highly centralized, all-powerful executive. But, conversely,
a country which possesses a highly centralized, all-powerful
executive is more likely to wage war than a country where
power is decentralized and the population genuinely governs
itself. There are several reasons for this. Dictatorships are
rarely secure. Whenever a tyrant feels that his popularity
is waning, he is tempted to exploit nationalistic passion in
order to consolidate his own position. Pogroms and
treason trials are the ordinary devices by means of which
a dictator revives the flagging enthusiasm of his people.
When these fail, he may be driven to war. Nor must we
forget that the more absolute the ruler, the more com¬
pletely does he tend to associate his own personal prestige
with the prestige of the nation he rules. ‘L’Etat cest
moV is an illusion to which kings, dictators and even
such minor members of the ruling clique as bureaucrats
and diplomats succumb with a fatal facility. For the
victims of this illusion, a loss of national prestige is a
blow to their private vanity, a national victory is a per¬
sonal triumph. Extreme centralization of power creates
opportunities for individuals to believe that the state is
themselves. To make or to threaten war becomes, for
the tyrant, a method of self-assertion. The state is made
the instrument of an individual’s manias of persecution
and grandeur. Thus we see that extreme centralization of
power is not only necessary if war is to be waged success¬
fully; it is also a contributory cause of war.

In existing circumstances the ruling classes of every
nation feel that they must prepare for war. This means
that there will be a general tendency to increase the power

64

CENTRALIZATION AND DECENTRALIZATION
of the central executive. This increase of power of the
central executive tends to make war more likely. Hence
there will be demands for yet more intensive centraliza¬
tion. And so on, ad infinitum — or, rather, until the
crash comes.

So long as civilized countries continue to prepare for
war, it is enormously improbable that any of them will
pursue a policy of decentralization and the extension of
the principle of self-government. On the contrary, power
will tend to become more narrowly concentrated than at
present, not only in the totalitarian states, but also in the
democratic countries, which will therefore tend to become
less and less democratic. Indeed, the movement away from
democratic forms of government and towards centralization
of authority and military tyranny is already under way in
the democratic countries. In England such symptoms as
the Sedition Bill, the enrolment of an army of ‘air raid
wardens,’ the secret but systematic drilling of government
servants in the technique of ‘air raid precautions,’ are
unmistakable. In France the executive has already taken
to itself the power to conscribe everybody and everything
in the event of war breaking out. In Belgium, Holland
and the Scandinavian countries, as well as in the more
powerful democracies, huge sums are being spent on re¬
armament. But rearmament is not a mere accumulation
of ironmongery. There must be men trained to use the
new weapons, a supply of docile labour for their manu¬
facture. An increase in the amount of a country’s
armaments implies a corresponding increase in the degree
of its militarization. The fire-eaters .of the Left who,
for the last two years, have been calling for a ‘firm stand’

( i.e . military action) on the part of the democratic countries
against Fascist aggression have in effect been calling for
an acceleration of the process by which the democratic
countries are gradually, but systematically, being trans-

E 65

ENDS AND MEANS

formed into the likeness of those Fascist states they so
much detest.

Nothing succeeds like success — even success that is
merely apparent. The prevalence of centralization in the
contemporary world creates a popular belief that centraliza¬
tion is not what in fact it is — a great evil, imposed upon
the world by the threat of war and avoidable only with
difficulty and at the price of enormous effort and con¬
siderable sacrifices — but intrinsically sound policy. Because
in fact political power is being more and more closely
concentrated, people have come to be persuaded that the
way to desirable change lies through the concentration of
power. Centralization is the order of the day ; the Zeitgeist
commands it; therefore, they argue, centralization must
be right. They forget that the Zeitgeist is just as likely to
be a spirit of evil as a spirit of good and that the fact that
something happens to exist is in no way a guarantee that
it ought to exist.

Every dictatorship has its own private jargon. The
vocabularies are different; but the purpose which they
serve is in all cases the same — to legitimate the local
despotism, to make a de facto government appear to be
a government by divine right. Such jargons are instruments
of tyranny as indispensable as police spies and a press
censorship. They provide a set of terms in which the
maddest policies can be rationalized and the most monstrous
crimes abundantly justified. They serve as moulds for a
whole people’s thoughts and feelings and desires. By means
of them the oppressed can be persuaded, not only to
tolerate, but actually to worship their insane and criminal
oppressors.

Significantly enough, one word is common to all the
dictatorial vocabularies and is used for purposes of
justification and rationalization by Fascists, Nazis and
Communists alike. That word is ‘historical.’

66

CENTRALIZATION AND DECENTRALIZATION

Thus, the dictatorship of the proletariat is an ‘historical
necessity.* The violence of Communists is justified because,
unlike Fascist violence, it is being used to forward an
ineluctable ‘historical* process.

In the same way, Fascism is said by its supporters to
possess a quality of ‘ historical ’ inevitableness. The Italians
have a great ‘ historical mission,’ which is to create an empire,
in other words to gas and machine-gun people weaker than
themselves.

No less ‘historically’ necessary and right are the
brutalities of men in brown shirts. As for the ‘historical’
importance of the Aryan race, this is so prodigious that
absolutely any wickedness, any folly is permitted to men
with fair hair and blue eyes — even to nachgedunkelte
Schrumpf-Germanen, like Hitler himself and the swarthy
little Goebbels.

The appeal to history is one which the dictators find
particularly convenient ; for the assumption which under¬
lies it is that, in Hegelian language, the real is the rational —
that what happens is ultimately the same as what ought
to happen.

For example, it very often happens that might triumphs
over right; therefore might is ‘historical’ and deserves
to conquer.

Again, absolute power is intoxicatingly delightful. In
consequence, those who have seized absolute power are
prepared, as a rule, to make use of any means, however
disgraceful, in order to retain it. Spying, delation, torture,
arbitrary imprisonment and execution — in every dictatorial
country these are the ordinary instruments of domestic
policy. They occur; they are therefore ‘historical.’ Being
historical they are, in some tief, Hegelian way, reasonable
and right.

That such a doctrine should be believed and taught
by tyrants is not surprising. The odd, the profoundly

67

ENDS AND MEANS

depressing fact is that it should be accepted as true by
millions who are not tyrants, nor even the subjects of
tyrants. For ever-increasing numbers of men and women,
‘ historicalness ’ is coming to be accepted as one of the
supreme values. This implicit identification of what ought
to be with what is effectively vitiates all thinking about
morals, about politics, about progress, about social reform,
even about art. In those who make the identification it
induces a kind of busy, Panglossian fatalism. Looking
out upon the world, they observe that circumstances seem
to be conspiring to drive men in a certain direction. This
movement is ‘historical,’ therefore possesses value — exists
and therefore ought to exist. They accept what is.
Indeed, they do much more than accept; they applaud,
they give testimonials. If the real is the rational and the
right, then it follows that a ‘historical’ action must have
the same results as an action dictated by reason and the
loftiest idealism.

Let us return, for a concrete example, to this matter of
the centralization of power. The particular circumstances
of our time (nationalistic sentiment, economic imperialism,
threats of war and so forth) conspire to create a tendency
towards the concentration and centralization of authority.
The consequence of this is a curtailment of individual
liberties and a progressive regimentation of the masses,
even in countries hitherto enjoying a democratic form of
government. The rational idealist deplores this tendency
towards tyranny and enslavement, and is convinced that
its results can only be bad. Not so the man who is tief
enough to regard historicalness as a value. His ultimate
aim is probably the same as that of the rational idealist.
But, believing as he does that the real is the rational,
he persuades himself that the road which circumstances
conspire to impose upon him must necessarily lead him
to the desired goal. He believes that tyranny will some-

68

CENTRALIZATION AND DECENTRALIZATION
how result in democracy, enslavement in the liberation of
the individual, concentration of political and economic
power in self-government all round. He is ready, in a
word, to tolerate or even actively engage in any wicked¬
ness or any imbecility, because he is convinced that there
is some ‘historical* providence which will cause bad,
inappropriate means to result in good ends.

The sooner we convince ourselves that ‘historicalness’
is not a value and that what we allow circumstances to
make us do has no necessary connection with what we
ought to do, the better it will be for ourselves and for
the world we live in. At the present moment of time,
the ‘historical’ is almost unmitigatedly evil. To accept the
‘historical’ and to work for it is to co-operate with the
powers of darkness against the light.

69

Chapter VIII

DECENTRALIZATION AND SELF-GOVERNMENT

THE Anarchists propose that the state should be
abolished ; and in so far as it serves as the instrument
by means of which the ruling class preserves its privileges,
in so far as it is a device for enabling paranoiacs to satisfy
their lust for power and carry out their crazy dreams of
glory, the state is obviously worthy of abolition. But in
complex societies like our own the state has certain other
and more useful functions to perform. It is clear, for
example, that in any such society there must be some
organization responsible for co-ordinating the activities of
the various constituent groups; clear, too, that there must
be a body to which is delegated the power of acting in the
name of the society as a whole. If the word ‘state" is too
unpleasantly associated with ideas of domestic oppression
and foreign war, with irresponsible domination and no less
irresponsible submission, then by all means let us call the
necessary social machinery by some other name. For the
present there is no general agreement as to what that name
should be; I shall therefore go on using the bad old word,
until some better one is invented.

From what has been said in the preceding chapters it is
clear that no economic reform, however intrinsically desir¬
able, can lead to desirable changes in individuals and the
society they constitute, unless it is carried through in a
desirable context and by desirable methods. So far as the
state is concerned, the desirable context for reform is de¬
centralization and self-government all round. The desirable
methods for enacting reform are the methods of non-violence.

70

DECENTRALIZATION & SELF-GOVERNMENT

Passing from the general to the particular and the con¬
crete, the rational idealist finds himself confronted by the
following questions. First, by what means can the prin¬
ciple of self-government be applied to the daily lives of
men and women? Second, to what extent is the self-
government of the component parts of a society compatible
with its efficiency as a whole? And, thirdly, if a central
organization is needed to co-ordinate the activities of the
self-governing parts, what is to prevent this organization
from becoming a ruling oligarchy of the kind with which
we are only too painfully familiar?

The technique for self-government all round, self-
government for ordinary people in their ordinary avoca¬
tions, is a matter which we cannot profitably discuss unless
we have a clear idea of what may be called the natural
history and psychology of groups. Quantitatively, a group
differs from a crowd in size; qualitatively, in the kind and
intensity of the mental life of the constituent individuals.
A crowd is a lot of people; a group is a few. A crowd has
a mental life inferior in intellectual quality and emotionally
less under voluntary control than the mental life of each of
its members in isolation. The mental life of a group is not
inferior, either intellectually or emotionally, to the mental
life of the individuals composing it and may, in favourable
circumstances, actually be superior.

The significant psychological facts about the crowd are
as follows. The tone of crowd emotion is essentially orgi¬
astic and dionysiac. In virtue of his membership of the
crowd, the individual is released from the limitations of his
personality, made free of the sub-personal, sub-human
world of unrestrained feeling and uncriticized belief. To
be a member of a crowd is an experience closely akin to
alcoholic intoxication. Most human beings feel a craving
to escape from the cramping limitations of their ego, to
take periodical holidays from their all too familiar, all too

71

ENDS AND MEANS

squalid little self. As they do not know how to travel
upwards from personality into a region of super-personality
and as they are unwilling, even if they do know, to fulfil
the ethical, psychological and physiological conditions of
self-transcendence, they turn naturally to the descending
road, the road that leads down from personality to the
darkness of sub-human emotionalism and panic animality.
Hence the persistent craving for narcotics and stimulants,
hence the never-failing attraction of the crowd. The suc¬
cess of the dictators is due in large measure to their extremely
skilful exploitation of the universal human need for escape
from the limitations of personality. Perceiving that people
wished to take holidays from themselves in sub-human
emotionality, they have systematically provided their sub¬
jects with the occasions for doing so. The Communists
denounce religion as the opium of the people; but all they
have done is to replace this old drug by a new one of similar
composition. For the crowd around the relic of the saint
they have substituted the crowd at the political meeting;
for religious procession, military reviews and May Day
parades. It is the same with the Fascist dictators. In all
the totalitarian states the masses are persuaded, and even
compelled, to take periodical holidays from themselves in
the sub-human world of crowd emotion. It is significant
that while they encourage and actually command the descent
into sub-humanity, the dictators do all they can to prevent
men from taking the upward road from personal limitation,
the road that leads towards non-attachment to the ‘things of
this world’ and attachment to that which is super-personal.
The higher manifestations of religion are far more suspect
to the tyrants than the lower — and with reason. For the
man who escapes from egotism into super-personality has
transcended his old idolatrous loyalty, not only to himself,
but also to the local divinities — nation, party, class, deified
boss. Self-transcendence, escape from the prison of the

72

DECENTRALIZATION & SELF-GOVERNMENT
ego into union with what is above personality, is generally
accomplished in solitude. That is why the tyrants like to
herd their subjects into those vast crowds, in which the
individual is reduced to a state of intoxicated sub-humanity.

It is time now to consider the group. The first question
we must ask ourselves is this : when does a group become
a crowd? This is not a problem in verbal definition; it is
a matter of observation and experience. It is found empiric¬
ally that group activities and characteristic group feeling
become increasingly difficult when more than about twenty
or less than about five individuals are involved. Groups
which come together for the purpose of carrying out a
specific job of manual work can afford to be larger than
groups which meet for the purpose of pooling information
and elaborating a common policy, or which meet for reli¬
gious exercises, or for mutual comfort, or merely for the
sake of convivially ‘getting together.’ Twenty or even as
many as thirty people can work together and still remain a
group. But these numbers would be much too high in a
group that had assembled for the other purposes I have
mentioned. It is significant that Jesus had only twelve
apostles ; that the Benedictines were divided into groups of
ten under a dean (Latin decanus , from Greek SeVa, ten) ; that
ten is the number of individuals constituting a Communist
cell. Committees of more than a dozen members are found
to be unmanageably large. Eight is the perfect number for
a dinner party. The most successful Quaker meetings are
generally meetings at which few people are present. Edu¬
cationists agree that the most satisfactory size for a class is
between eight and fifteen. In armies, the smallest unit is
about ten. The witches* ‘coven’ was a group of thirteen.
And so on. All evidence points clearly to the fact that there
is an optimum size for groups and that this optimum is
round about ten for groups meeting for social, religious or
intellectual purposes, and from ten to thirty for groups

73

• ENDS AND MEANS

engaged in manual work. This being so, it is clear that the
units of self-government should be groups of the optimum
size. If they are smaller than the optimum, they will fail
to develop that emotional field which gives to group
activity its characteristic quality, while the available quan¬
tity of pooled information and experience will be inadequate.
If they are larger than the optimum, they will tend to split
into sub-groups of the optimum size or, if the constituent
individuals remain together in a crowd, there will be a danger
of their relapsing into the crowd’s sub-human stupidity and
emotionality.

The technique of industrial self-government has been
discussed with a wealth of concrete examples in a remark¬
able book by the French economist, Hyacinthe Dubreuil,
entitled A Chacun sa Chance. Among the writers on indus¬
trial organization Dubreuil occupies a place apart; for he
is almost the only one of them who has himself had experi¬
ence of factory conditions as a workman. Accordingly,
what he writes on the subject of industrial organization
carries an authority denied to the utterances of those who
rely on second-hand information as a basis for their theories.
Dubreuil points out that even the largest industries can be
organized so as to consist of a series of self-governing, yet
co-ordinated, groups of, at the outside, thirty members.
Within the industry each one of such groups can act as a
kind of sub-contractor, undertaking to perform so much
of such and such a kind of work for such and such a sum.
The equitable division of this sum among the constituent
members is left to the group itself, as is also the preservation
of discipline, the election of representatives and leaders.
The examples which Dubreuil quotes from the annals of in¬
dustrial history and from his own experience as a workman
tend to show that this form of organization is appreciated
by the workers, to whom it gives a measure of inde¬
pendence even within the largest manufacturing concern,

74

DECENTRALIZATION & SELF-GOVERNMENT
and that in most cases it results in increased efficiency of
working. It possesses, as he points out, the further merit
of being a form of organization that educates those who
belong to it in the practice of co-operation and mutual
responsibility.

Under the present dispensation, the great majority of
factories are little despotisms, benevolent in some cases,
malevolent in others. Even where benevolence prevails,
passive obedience is demanded of the workers, who are
ruled by overseers, not of their own election, but appointed
from above. In theory, they may be the subjects of a
democratic state; but in practice they spend the whole of
their working lives as the subjects of a petty tyrant.
Dubreuil’s scheme, if it were generally acted upon, would
introduce genuine democracy into the factory. And if some
such scheme is not acted upon, it is of small moment to the
individual whether the industry in which he is working is
owned by the state, by a co-operative society, by a joint-
stock company or by a private individual. Passive obed¬
ience to officers appointed from above is always passive
obedience, whoever the general in ultimate control may be.
Conversely, even if the ultimate control is in the wrong
hands, the man who voluntarily accepts rules in the making
of which he has had a part, who obeys leaders he himself
has chosen, who has helped to decide how much and in what
conditions he himself and his companions shall be paid, is
to that extent the free and responsible subject of a genuinely
democratic government, and enjoys those psychological
advantages which only such a form of government can give.

Of modem wage-slaves, Lenin writes that they ‘remain
to such an extent crushed by want and poverty that they
“can’t be bothered with democracy,” have “no time for
politics,” and in the ordinary peaceful course of events, the
majority of the population is debarred from participating
in public political life.’ This statement is only partially

75

ENDS AND MEANS

true. Not all those who can’t be bothered with democracy
are debarred from political life by want and poverty.
Plenty of well-paid workmen and, for that matter, plenty
of the wealthiest beneficiaries of the capitalistic system, find
that they can’t be bothered with politics. The reason is not
economic, but psychological ; has its source, not in environ¬
ment, but in heredity. People belong to different psycho-
physiological types and are endowed with different degrees
of general intelligence. The will and ability to take an
effective interest in large-size politics do not belong to all,
or even a majority of, men and women. Preoccupation with
general ideas, with things and people distant in space, with
contingent events remote in future time, is something which
it is given to only a few to feel. ‘What’s Hecuba to him or
he to Hecuba?* The answer in most cases is: Nothing
whatsoever. An improvement in the standard of living
might perceptibly increase the number of those for whom
Hecuba meant something. But even if all were rich, there
would still be many congenitally incapable of being bothered
with anything so far removed from the warm, tangible facts
of everyday experience. As things are at present, millions
of men and women come into the world disfranchised by
nature. They have the privilege of voting on long-range,
large-scale political issues; but they are congenitally in¬
capable of taking an intelligent interest in any but short-
range, small-scale problems. Too often the framers of
democratic constitutions have acted as though man were
made for democracy, not democracy for man. The vote
has been a kind of bed of Procustes upon which, however
long their views, however short their ability, all human
beings were expected to stretch themselves. Not unnatur¬
ally, the results of this kind of democracy have proved
disappointing. Nevertheless, it remains true that demo¬
cratic freedom is good for those who enjoy it, and that
practice in self-government is an almost indispensable ele-

76

DECENTRALIZATION & SELF-GOVERNMENT
ment in the curriculum of man’s moral and psychological
education. Human beings belong to different types; it is
therefore necessary to create different types of democratic
and self-governing institutions, suitable for the various
kinds of men and women. Thus, people with short-range,
small-scale interests can find scope for their kind of political
abilities in self-governing groups within an industry, within
a consumer or producer co-operative, within the adminis¬
trative machinery of the parish, borough or county. By
means of comparatively small changes in the existing
systems of local and professional organization it would be
possible to make almost every individual a member of some
self-governing group. In this way the curse of merely
passive obedience could be got rid of, the vice of political
indolence cured and the advantages of responsible and
active freedom brought to all. In this context it is worth
remarking on a very significant change which has recently
taken place in our social habits. Materially, this change
may be summed up as the decline of the community;
psychologically, as the decline of the community sense.
The reasons for this double change are many and of various
kinds. Here are a few of the more important.

Birth-control has reduced the size of the average
family and, for various reasons which will be apparent
later, the old habits of patriarchal living have practically
disappeared. It is very rare nowadays to find parents,
married children and grandchildren living together in the
same house or in close association. Large families and
patriarchal groups were communities in which children and
adults had to learn (often by very painful means) the art
of co-operation and the need to accept responsibility for
others. These admittedly rather crude schools of com¬
munity sense have now disappeared.

New methods of transport have profoundly modified the
life in the village and small town. Up to only a generation

77

ENDS AND MEANS

ago most villages were to a great extent self-sufficing com¬
munities. Every trade was represented by its local techni¬
cian; the local produce was consumed or exchanged in the
neighbourhood; the inhabitants worked on the spot. If
they desired instruction or entertainment or religion, they
had to mobilize the local talent and produce it themselves.
To-day all this is changed. Thanks to improved transport,
the village is now closely bound up with the rest of the
economic world. Supplies and technical services are ob¬
tained from a distance. Large numbers of the inhabitants
go out to work in factories and offices in far-off cities.
Music and the drama are provided, not by local talent, but
over the ether and in the picture theatre. Once all the
members of the community were always on the spot; now,
thanks to cars, motor cycles and buses the villagers are
rarely in their village. Community fun, community wor¬
ship, community efforts to secure culture have tended to
decline, for the simple reason that, in leisure hours, a large
part of the community’s membership is always somewhere
else. Nor is this all. The older inhabitants of Middletown,
as readers of the Lynds’ classical study of American small¬
town life will remember, complained that the internal-com¬
bustion engine had led to a decline of neighbourliness.
Neighbours have Fords and Chevrolets, consequently are
no longer there to be neighbourly; or if by chance they
should be at home, they content themselves with calling up
on the telephone. Technological progress has reduced the
number of physical contacts, impoverished the spiritual
relations between the members of a community.

Centralized professionalism has not only affected local
entertainment; it has also affected the manifestations of
local charity and mutual aid. State-provided hospitals,
state-provided medical and nursing services are certainly
much more efficient than the ministrations of the neigh¬
bours. But this increased efficiency is purchased at the

78

DECENTRALIZATION & SELF-GOVERNMENT
price of a certain tendency on the part of neighbours to
disclaim liability for one another and throw their responsi¬
bilities entirely upon the central authority. Under a
perfectly organized system of state socialism charity would
be, not merely superfluous, but actually criminal. Good
Samaritans would be prosecuted for daring to interfere in
their bungling amateurish way with what was obviously a
case for state-paid professionals.

The last three generations have witnessed a vast increase
in the size and number of large cities. Life is more exciting
and more money can be earned in the cities than in villages
and small towns. Hence the migration from country to
city. In the van of this migrating host have marched the
ambitious, the talented, the adventurous. For more than a
century there has been a tendency for the most gifted
members of small rural communities to leave home and
seek their fortunes in the towns. Consequently what
remains in the villages and country towns of the indus¬
trialized countries is in the nature of a residual population,
dysgenically selected for its lack of spirit and intellectual
gifts. Why is it so hard to induce peasants and small
farmers to adopt new scientific methods? Among other
reasons, because almost every exceptionally intelligent child
born into a rural family for a century past has taken the
earliest opportunity of deserting the land for the city.
Community life in the country is thus impoverished; but
(and this is the important point) the community life of the
great urban centres is not correspondingly enriched. It is
not enriched for the good reason that, in growing enormous,
cities have also grown chaodc. A metropolitan ‘wen,’ as
Cobbett was already calling the reladvely tiny London of
his day, is no longer an organic whole, no longer exists as
a community, in whose life individuals can fruitfully par¬
ticipate. Men and women rub shoulders with other men
and women; but the contact is external and mechanical.

79

ENDS AND MEANS

Each one of them can say, in the words of the Jolly Miller
of the song, ‘I care for nobody, no, not I, and nobody
cares for me.’ Metropolitan life is atomistic. The city, as
a city, does nothing to correlate its human particles into a
pattern of responsible, communal living. What the country
loses on the swings, the city loses all over again on the
roundabouts.

In the light of this statement of the principal reasons for
the recent decline of the community and of the community
sense in individuals, we can suggest certain remedies. For
example, schools and colleges can be transformed into
organic communities and used to offset, during a short
period of the individual’s career, the decay in family and
village life. (A very interesting experiment in this direc¬
tion is being made at Black Mountain College in North
Carolina.) To some extent, no doubt, the old ‘natural’ life
of villages and small towns, the life that the economic,
technological and religious circumstances of the past con¬
spired to impose upon them, can be replaced by a con¬
sciously designed synthetic product — a life of associations
organized for local government, for sport, for cultural
activities and the like. Such associations already exist, and
there should be no great difficulty in opening them to
larger numbers and, at the same time, in making their
activities so interesting that people will wish to join them
instead of taking the line of least resistance, as they do now,
and living unconnected, atomistic lives, passively obeying
during their working hours and passively allowing them¬
selves to be entertained by machinery during their hours of
leisure. The existence of associations of this kind would
serve to make country life less dull and so do something to
arrest the flight towards the city. At the same time, the
decentralization of industry and its association with agri¬
culture should make it possible for the countryman to earn
as much as the city dweller. In spite of the ease with which

80

DECENTRALIZATION & SELF-GOVERNMENT
electric power can now be distributed, the movement
towards the decentralization of industry is not yet a very
powerful one. Great centres of population, like London
and Paris, possess an enormous power of attraction to
industries. The greater the population, the greater the
market; and the greater the market, the stronger the gravi¬
tational pull exercised upon the manufacturer. New indus¬
tries establish themselves on the outskirts of large cities and
make them become still larger. For the sake of slightly
increased profits, due to lower distributing costs, the manu¬
facturers are busily engaged in making London chaotically
large, hopelessly congested, desperately hard to enter or
leave, and vulnerable to air attacks as no other city of
Europe is vulnerable. To compel a rational and planned
decentralization of industry is one of the legitimate, the
urgently necessary functions of the state.

Life in the great city is atomistic. How shall it be given
a communal pattern? How shall the individual be incor¬
porated in a responsible, self-governing group? In a
modern city, the problem of organizing responsible com¬
munity life on a local basis is not easily solved. Modern
cities have been created and are preserved by the labours
of highly specialized technicians. The massacre of a few
thousands of engineers, administrators and doctors would
be sufficient to reduce any of the great metropolitan centres
to a state of plague-stricken, starving chaos. Accordingly,
in most of its branches, the local government of a great city
has become a highly technical affair, a business of the kind
that must be centrally planned and carried out by experts.
The only department in which there would seem to be a
possibility of profitably extending the existing institutions
of local self-government is the department concerned with
police-work and the observance of laws. I have read that
in Japan, the cities were, and perhaps still are, divided into
wards of about a hundred inhabitants apiece. The people
F 81

ENDS AND MEANS

in each ward accepted a measure of liability for one another
and were to some extent responsible for good behaviour
and the observance of law within their own small unit. That
such a system lends itself to the most monstrous abuses
under a dictatorial government is obvious. Indeed, it is
reported that the Nazis have already organized their cities
in this way. But there is no governmental institution that
cannot be abused. Elected parliaments have been used as
instruments of oppression; plebiscites have served to con¬
firm and strengthen tyranny; courts of justice have been
transformed into Star Chambers and military tribunals.
Like all the rest, the ward system may be a source of good
in a desirable context and a source of unmitigated evil in
an undesirable context. It remains in any case a device
worth considering by those who aspire to impose a com¬
munal pattern upon the atomistic, irresponsible life of
modem city dwellers. For the rest, it looks as though the
townsman’s main experience of democratic institutions and
responsible self-government would have to be obtained,
not in local administration, but in the fields of industry
and economics, of religious and cultural activity, of athletics
and entertainment.

In the preceding paragraphs I have tried to answer the
first of our questions and have described the methods by
which the principle of self-government can be applied to
the daily lives of ordinary men and women. Our second
question concerns the compatibility of self-government all
round with the efficiency of industry in particular and
society as a whole. In Russia self-government in industry
was tried in the early years of the revolution and was
abandoned in favour of authoritarian management. Within
the factory discipline is no longer enforced by elected
representatives of the Soviet or workers’ committee, but by
appointees of the Communist Party. The new conception
of management current in Soviet Russia was summed up

82

DECENTRALIZATION & SELF-GOVERNMENT

by Kaganovitch in a speech before the seventeenth con¬
gress of the Communist Party. ‘Management,’ he said,
‘means the power to distribute material things, to appoint
and discharge subordinates, in a word, to be master of the
particular enterprise.’ This is a definition of management
to which every industrial dictator in the capitalist countries
would unhesitatingly subscribe.

By supporters of the present Russian government it is
said that the change over from self-government to authori¬
tarian management had to be made in the interests of effi¬
ciency. That extremely inexperienced and ill-educated
workers should have been unable to govern themselves and
keep up industrial efficiency seems likely enough. But in
Western Europe and the United States such a situation is
not likely to arise. Indeed, Dubreuil has pointed out that,
as a matter of historical fact, self-government within fac¬
tories has often led to increased efficiency. It would seem,
then, that in countries where all men and women are
relatively well educated and have been accustomed for some
time to the working of democratic institutions, there is no
danger that self-government will lead to a breakdown of
discipline within the factory or a decline in output. But,
like ‘liberty,’ the word ‘efficiency’ covers a multitude of
sins. Even if it should be irrefragably demonstrated that
self-government in industry invariably led to greater con¬
tentment and increased output, even if it could be proved
experimentally that the best features of individualism and
collectivism could be combined if the state were to co¬
ordinate the activities of self-governing industries, there
would still be complainers of ‘inefficiency.’ And by their
own lights, the complaints would be quite right. For to
the ruling classes, not only in the totalitarian, but also in
the democratic countries, ‘efficiency’ means primarily
‘military efficiency.’ Now, a society in which the prin¬
ciple of self-government has been applied to the ordinary

83

ENDS AND MEANS

activities of all its members, is a society which, for purely
military purposes, is probably decidedly inefficient. A
militarily efficient society is one whose members have been
brought up in habits of passive obedience and at the head
of which there is an individual exercising absolute authority
through a perfectly trained hierarchy of administrators. In
time of war, such a society can be manipulated as a single
unit and with extraordinary rapidity and precision. A
society composed of men and women habituated to working
in self-governing groups is not a perfect war-machine. Its
members may think and have wills of their own. But
soldiers must not think nor have wills. ‘Theirs not to
reason why; theirs but to do and die.’ Furthermore, a
society in which authority is decentralized, a society com¬
posed of co-ordinated but self-governing parts, cannot be
manipulated so swiftly and certainly as a totalitarian society
under a dictator. Self-government all round is not com¬
patible with military efficiency. So long as nations persist
in using war as an instrument of policy, military efficiency
will be prized above all else. Therefore schemes for extend¬
ing the principle of self-government will either not be tried
at all or, if tried, as in Russia, will be speedily abandoned.
Inevitably, we find ourselves confronted, yet once more,
by the central evil of our time, the overpowering and
increasing evil of war. In the next chapter I shall discuss
possible methods for dealing with this evil. In what
remains of the present chapter, I must try to answer our
questions concerning the efficiency of a society made up of
co-ordinated self-governing units and the nature of the
co-ordinating body.

Dubreuil has shown that even the largest industrial
undertakings can be organized so as to consist of a number
of co-ordinated but self-governing groups; and he has
produced reasons for supposing that such an organization
would not reduce the efficiency of the businesses concerned

84

DECENTRALIZATION & SELF-GOVERNMENT

and might even increase it. This small-scale industrial
democracy is theoretically compatible with any kind of
large-scale control of the industries concerned. It can be
(and in certain cases actually has been) applied to industries
working under the capitalist system; to businesses under
direct state control; to co-operative enterprises; to mixed
concerns, like the Port of London Authority, which are
under state supervision, but have their own autonomous,
functional management. In practice this small-scale indus¬
trial democracy, this self-government for all, is intrinsically
most compatible with business organizations of the last
two kinds — co-operative and mixed. It is almost equally
incompatible with capitalism and state Socialism. Capital¬
ism tends to produce a multiplicity of petty dictators, each
in command of his own little business kingdom. State
Socialism tends to produce a single, centralized, totalitarian
dictatorship, wielding absolute authority over all its subjects
through a hierarchy of bureaucratic agents.

Co-operatives and mixed concerns already exist and work
extremely well. To increase their numbers and to extend
their scope would not seem a revolutionary act, in the sense
that it would probably not provoke the violent opposition
which men feel towards projects involving an entirely new
principle. In its effects, however, the act would be revolu¬
tionary; for it would result in a profound modification of
the existing system. This alone is a sufficient reason for
preferring these forms of ultimate industrial control to all
others. The intrinsic compatibility of the co-operative
enterprise and mixed concern with small-scale democracy
and self-government all round constitutes yet another
reason for the preference. To discuss the arrangements for
co-ordinating the activities of partially autonomous co¬
operative and mixed concerns is not my business in this
place. For technical details, the Teader is referred once
again to the literature of social and economic planning. I

85

ENDS AND MEANS

will confine myself here to quoting a relevant passage from
the admirable essay contributed by Professor David
Mitrany to the Yale Review in 1934. Speaking of the need
for comprehensive planning, Professor Mitrany writes that
‘this does not necessarily mean more centralized govern¬
ment and bureaucratic administration.’ Public control is
just as likely to mean decentralization — as, for instance, the
taking over from a nation-wide private corporation of
activities and services which could be performed with
better results by local authorities. Planning, in fact, if it
is intelligent, should allow for a great variety of organiza¬
tion, and should adapt the structure and working of its
parts to the requirements of each case.

‘ A striking change of view on this point is evident in the
paradox that the growing demand for state action comes
together with a growing distrust of the state’s efficiency.
Hence, even among Socialists, as may be seen from the
more recent Fabian tracts, the old idea of the nationaliza¬
tion of an industry under a government department, respon¬
sible to Parliament for both policy and management, has
generally been replaced by schemes which even under
public ownership provide for autonomous functional
managements.’ After describing the constitution of such
mixed concerns as the Central Electricity Board (set up in
England by a Conservative government), the British Broad¬
casting Corporation and the London Transport Board,
Professor Mitrany concludes that it is only ‘by some such
means that the influence both of politics and of money can
be eliminated. Radicals and Conservatives now agree on
the need for placing the management of such public under¬
takings upon a purely functional basis, which reduces the
r61e of Parliament or of any other representative body to a
distant, occasional and indirect determination of general
policy.’

Above these semi-autonomous ‘functional managers’

86

DECENTRALIZATION & SELF-GOVERNMENT
there will have to be, it is clear, an ultimate co-ordinating
authority — a group of technicians whose business it will be
to manage the managers. What is to prevent the central
political executive from joining hands with these technical
managers of managers to become the ruling oligarchy of a
totalitarian state? The answer is that, so long as nations
continue to prepare for the waging of scientific warfare,
there is nothing whatever to prevent this from happening
— there is every reason, indeed, to suppose that it will
happen. In the context of militarism, even the most
intrinsically desirable changes inevitably become distorted.
In a country which is preparing for modem war, reforms
intended to result in decentralization and genuine demo¬
cracy will be made to serve the purposes of military effi¬
ciency — which means in practice that they will be used to
strengthen the position of a dictator or a ruling oligarchy.

Where the international context is militaristic, dictators
will use the necessity for ‘defence’ as their excuse for
seizing absolute power. But even where there is no threat
of war, the temptation to abuse a position of authority will
always be strong. How shall our hypothetical managers of
managers and the members of the central political executive
be delivered from this evil ? This point is discussed at some
length in the last paragraphs of the chapter on Inequality,
to which the reader is referred. Ambition may be checked,
but cannot be suppressed by any kind of legal machinery.
If it is to be scotched, it must be scotched at the source, by
education in the widest sense of the word. In our societies
men are paranoiacally ambitious, because paranoiac ambi¬
tion is admired as a virtue, and successful climbers are
adored as though they were gods. More books have been
written about Napoleon than about any other human being.
The fact is deeply and alarmingly significant. WTiat must
be the day-dreams of people for whom the world’s most
agile social climber and ablest bandit is the hero they most

87

ENDS AND MEANS

desire to hear about? Duces and Fuehrers will cease to
plague the world only when the majority of its inhabitants
regard such adventurers with the same disgust as they now
bestow on swindlers and pimps. So long as men worship
the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will
duly arise and make them miserable. The proper atti¬
tude towards the ‘hero’ is not Carlyle’s, but Bacon’s.
‘He doth like the ape,* wrote Bacon of the ambitious tyrant,
‘he doth like the ape that, the higher he clymbes, the more
he shewes his ars.* The hero’s qualities are brilliant; but
so is the mandril’s rump. When all concur in the great
Lord Chancellor’s judgment of Fuehrers, there will be no
more Fuehrers to judge. Meanwhile we must content
ourselves by putting merely legal and administrative
obstacles in the way of the ambitious. They are a great
deal better than nothing ; but they can never be completely
effective.

88

Chapter IX
WAR

EVERY road towards a better state of society is
blocked, sooner or later, by war, by threats of
war, by preparations for war. That is the truth, the
odious and inescapable truth, that emerges, plain for all
to see, from the discussions contained in the preceding
chapters.

Let us very briefly consider the nature of war, the causes
of war and the possible alternatives to war, the methods
of curing the mania of militarism afflicting the world at
the present time.1

I. Nature of War

(i) War is a purely human phenomenon. The lower
animals fight duels in the heat of sexual excitement and
kill for food and occasionally for sport. But the activities
of a wolf eating a sheep or a cat playing with a mouse
are no more war-like than the activities of butchers and
fox-hunters. Similarly, fights between hungry dogs or
rutting stags are like pot-house quarrels and have nothing
in common with war, which is mass murder organized in
cold blood. Some social insects, it is true, go out to fight
in armies; but their attacks are always directed against
members of another species. Man is unique in organizing
the mass murder of his own species.

1 Certain passages in this chapter are reprinted with little alteration
from articles contributed to An Encyclopaedia of Pacifism (London,
1937)-

89

ENDS AND MEANS

(ii) Certain biologists, of whom Sir Arthur Keith is the
most eminent, consider that war acts as ‘nature’s pruning
hook,’ ensuring the survival of the fittest among civilized
individuals and nations. This is obviously nonsensical.
War tends to eliminate the young and strong and to
spare the unhealthy. Nor is there any reason for supposing
that people with traditions of violence and a good technique
of war-making are superior to other peoples. The most
valuable human beings are not necessarily the most war¬
like. Nor as a matter of historical fact is it always the
most war-like who survive. We can sum up by saying that,
so far as individuals are concerned, war selects dysgenically ;
so far as nations and peoples are concerned it selects purely
at random, sometimes ensuring the domination and survival
of the more war-like peoples, sometimes, on the contrary,
ensuring their destruction and the survival of the unwarlike.

(in) There exist at the present time certain primitive
human societies, such as that of the Eskimos, in which
war is unknown and even unthinkable. All civilized
societies, however, are war-like. The question arises
whether the correlation between war and civilization is
necessary and unavoidable. The evidence of archaeology
seems to point to the conclusion that war made its appear¬
ance at a particular moment in the history of early
civilization. There is reason to suppose that the rise of
war was correlated with an abrupt change in the mode of
human consciousness. This change, as Dr. J. D. Unwin
suggests,1 may itself have been correlated with increased
sexual continence on the part of the ruling classes of the
war-like societies. The archaeological symptom of this
change is the almost sudden appearance of royal palaces
and elaborate funerary monuments. The rise of war
appears to be connected with the rise of self-conscious
leaders, preoccupied with the ideas of personal domination
1 In Sex and Culture (Oxford, 1934).

90

WAR

and personal survival after death. Even to-day, when
economic considerations are supposed to be supreme, ideas
of ‘glory* and ‘immortal fame’ still ferment in the minds
of the dictators and generals, and play an important part
in the causation of war.

(iv) The various civilizations of the world have adopted
fundamentally different attitudes towards war. Compare
the Chinese and Indian attitudes towards war with the
European. Europeans have always worshipped the military
hero and, since the rise of Christianity, the martyr. Not
so the Chinese. The ideal human being, according to
Confucian standards, is the just, reasonable, humane and
cultivated man, living at peace in an ordered and har¬
monious society. Confucianism, to quote Max Weber,
‘prefers a wise prudence to mere physical courage and
declares that an untimely sacrifice of life is unfitting for
a wise man.’ Our European admiration for military
heroism and martyrdom has tended to make men believe
that a good death is more important than a good life, and
that a long course of folly and crime can be cancelled out
by a single act of physical courage. The mysticism of
Lao Tsu (or whoever was the author of the Tao Teh
Ching) confirms and completes the rationalism of Con¬
fucius. The Tao is an eternal cosmic principle that is,
at the same time, the inmost root of the individual’s being.
Those who would live in harmony with Tao must refrain
from assertiveness, self-importance and aggressiveness,
must cultivate humility, and return good for evil.

Since the time of Confucius and Lao Tsu, Chinese ideals
have been essentially pacifistic. European poets have
glorified war; European theologians have found justifica¬
tions for religious persecution and nationalistic aggression.
This has not been so in China. Chinese philosophers and
Chinese poets have almost all been anti-militarists. The
soldier was regarded as an inferior being, not to be put

91

ENDS AND MEANS

on the same level with the scholar or administrator. It is
one of the tragedies of history that the Westernization of
China should have meant the progressive militarization of
a culture which, for nearly three thousand years, has
consistently preached the pacifist ideal. Conscription was
imposed on large numbers of Chinese in 1936, and the
soldier is now held up for admiration. Comic, but
significant, is the following quotation from the New York
Times of June 17th, 1937: 1 Sin Wan Pao, Shanghai’s
leading Chinese language newspaper, advised Adolf Hitler
and Benito Mussolini to-day to follow the examples of
General Yang Sen . . . war lord and commander of the
Twentieth Army in Szechwan Province. The general has
twenty-seven wives. “Only 40 years old, General Yang
has a child for every year of his life,” the newspaper said.
“General Yang has established complete military training
for his offspring. It begins when a young Yang reaches
the age of 7, with strict treatment by the time the child
is 14. The family has an exclusive military camp. When
visitors come, the Yang children hold a military reception
and march past the guests in strict review order.” ’ One
laughs; but the unfortunate truth is that General Yang
and the forty little Yangs in their strict review order are
grotesquely symptomatic of the new, worse, Western spirit
of a China that has turned its back on the wisdom of
Confucius and Lao Tsu and gone whoring after European
militarism. Japanese aggression is bound to intensify this
new militaristic spirit in China. Within a couple of genera¬
tions from now, it is quite possible that China will be an
aggressive imperialist power.

Indian pacifism finds its completest expression in the
teaching of Buddha. Buddhism, like Hinduism, teaches
ahimsa, or harmlessness towards all living beings. It for¬
bids even laymen to have anything to do with the
manufacture and sale of arms, with the making of poisons

92

WAR

and intoxicants, with soldiering or the slaughter of animals.
Alone of all the great world religions, Buddhism made its
way without persecution, censorship or inquisition. In all
these respects its record is enormously superior to that of
Christianity, which made its way among people wedded to
militarism and which was able to justify the bloodthirsty
tendencies of its adherents by an appeal to the savage
Bronze-Age literature of the Old Testament. For Bud¬
dhists, anger is always and unconditionally disgraceful. For
Christians, brought up to identify Jehovah with God, there
is such a thing as ‘righteous indignation.’ Thanks to this
possibility of indignation being righteous, Christians have
always felt themselves justified in making war and commit¬
ting the most hideous atrocities.

The fact that it should have been possible for the three
principal civilizations of the world to adopt three distinct
philosophic attitudes towards war is encouraging; for it
proves that there is' nothing ‘natural’ about our present
situation in relation to war. The existence of war and of
our political and theological justifications of war is no
more ‘natural’ than were the sanguinary manifestations of
sexual jealousy, so common in Europe up to the beginning
of last century and now of such rare occurrence. To
murder one’s unfaithful wife, or the lover of one’s sister
or mother, was something that used to be ‘done.’ Being
socially correct, it was regarded as inevitable, a manifestation
of unchanging ‘ human nature.’ Such murders are no longer
fashionable among the best people, therefore no longer seem
to us ‘natural.’ The malleability of human nature is such
that there is no reason why, if we so desire and set to
work in the right way, we should not rid ourselves of war
as we have freed ourselves from the weary necessity of
committing a crime passionnel every time a wife, mistress
or female relative gets herself seduced. War is not a law
of nature, nor even a law of human nature. It exists

93

ENDS AND MEANS

because men wish it to exist; and we know, as a matter of
historical fact, that the intensity of that wish has varied
from absolute zero to a frenzied maximum. The wish for
war in the contemporary world is widespread and of high
intensity. But our wills are to some extent free; we can
wish otherwise than we actually do. It is enormously
difficult for us to change our wishes in this matter; but
the enormously difficult is not the impossible. We must
be grateful for even the smallest crumbs of comfort.

II. Causes of War

War exists because people wish it to exist. They wish
it to exist for a variety of reasons.

(i) Many people like war because they find their peace¬
time occupations either positively humiliating and frustra¬
ting, or just negatively boring. In their studies on suicide
Durkheim and, more recently, Halbwachs have shown that
the suicide rate among non-combatants tends to fall during
war-time to about two-thirds of its normal figure. This
decline must be put down to the following causes : to the
simplification of life during war-time (it is in complex and
highly developed societies that the suicide rate is highest) ;
to the intensification of nationalist sentiment to a point
where most individuals are living in a state of chronic
enthusiasm ; to the fact that life during war-time takes on
significance and purposefulness, so that even the most
intrinsically boring job is ennobled as ‘war-work*; to the
artificial prosperity induced, at any rate for a time, by the
expansion of war industies ; to the increased sexual freedom
which is always claimed by societies, all or some of whose
members live under the menace of sudden death. Add to
this the fact that life in war-time is (or at least was in
previous wars) extremely interesting, at least during the
first years of die war. Rumour runs riot, and the papers

94

WAR

are crammed every morning with the most thrilling news.
To the influence of the press must be attributed the fact
that, whereas during the Franco-Prussian War the suicide
rate declined only in the belligerent countries, during the
World War a considerable decline was registered even in
the neutral states. In 1870 about half the inhabitants of
Europe were unable to read, and newspapers were few and
expensive. By 1914 primary education had everywhere been
compulsory for more than a generation and the addiction to
newspaper reading had spread to all classes of the popula¬
tion. Thus even neutrals were able to enjoy, vicariously
and at second hand, the exciting experience of war.

Up to the end of the last war non-combatants, except in
countries actually subject to invasion, were not in great
physical danger. In any future war it is clear that they
will be exposed to risks almost, if not quite, as great as
those faced by the fighting men. This will certainly tend
to diminish the enthusiasm of non-combatants for war.
But if it turns out that the effects of air bombardment are
less frightful than most experts at present believe they will
be, this enthusiasm may not be extinguished altogether, at
any rate during the first months of a war. During the last
war, a fair proportion of the combatants actually enjoyed
some phases at least of the fighting. The escape from the
dull and often stultifying routines of peace-time life was
welcomed, even though that escape was bought at the price
of physical hardship and the risk of death and mutilation.
It is possible that conditions in any future war will be so
appalling that even the most naturally adventurous and
combative human beings will soon come to hate and fear
the process of fighting. But until the next war actually
breaks out, nobody can have experience of the new
conditions of fighting. Meanwhile, all the governments
are actively engaged in making a subtle kind of propa¬
ganda that is directed against potential enemies, but not

95

ENDS AND MEANS

against war. They warn their subjects that they will be
bombarded from the air by fleets of enemy planes; they
persuade or compel them to subject themselves to air-raid
drills and other forms of military discipline ; they proclaim
the necessity of piling up enormous armaments for the
purpose of counter-attack and retaliation, and they actually
build those armaments to the tune, in most European
countries, of nearly or fully half the total national revenue.
At the same time they do all in their power to belittle
the danger from air raids. Millions of gas-masks are made
and distributed with assurances that they will provide com¬
plete protection. Those who make such assurances know
quite well that they are false. Gas-masks cannot be worn
by infants, invalids or the old, and give no protection
whatsoever against vesicants and some of the poisonous
smokes, which for this reason will be the chemicals chiefly
used by the air navies of the world. Meanwhile warnings
by impartial experts are either officially ignored or belitded.
(The attitude of the Government’s spokesman at the British
Medical Association meeting at Oxford in 1936, and that
of The Times in 1937 towards the Cambridge scientists who
warned the public against the probable effects of air bom¬
bardment, are highly significant in this context.) The whole
effort of all the governments is directed, I repeat, to making
propaganda against enemies and in favour of war; against
those who try to tell the truth about the nature and effects
of the new armaments and in favour of manufacturing such
armaments in ever-increasing quantities. There are two
reasons why such propaganda is as successful as it is. The
first, as I have explained in this paragraph, must be sought
in the fact that, up to the present, many non-combatants
and some combatants have found war a welcome relief from
the tedium of peace. The second reason will be set forth
in the following paragraph, which deals with another aspect
of the psychological causation of war.

96

WAR

(ii) A principal cause of war is nationalism, and national¬
ism is immensely popular because it is psychologically
satisfying to individual nationalists. Every nationalism is
an idolatrous religion, in which the god is the personified
state, represented in many instances by a more or less
deified king or dictator. Membership of the ex hypothesi
divine nation is thought of as imparting a kind of mystical
pre-eminence. Thus, all ‘God’s Englishmen’ are superior
to ‘the lesser breeds without the law,’ and every individual
God’s-Englishman is entitled to think himself superior to
every member of the lesser breed, even the lordliest and
wealthiest, even the most intelligent, the most highly gifted,
the most saintly. Any man who believes strongly enough
in the local nationalistic idolatry can find in his faith an
antidote against even the most acute inferiority complex.
Dictators feed the flames of national vanity and reap their
reward in the gratitude of millions to whom the conviction
that they are participants in the glory of the divine nation
brings relief from the gnawing consciousness of poverty,
social unimportance and personal insignificance.

Self-esteem has as its complement disparagement of
others. Vanity and pride beget contempt and hatred. But
contempt and hatred are exciting emotions — emotions from
which people ‘get a kick.’ Devotees of one national
idolatry enjoy getting the kick of hatred and contempt for
devotees of other idolatries. They pay for that enjoyment
by having to prepare for the wars which hatred and con¬
tempt render almost inevitable. Another point. In the
normal course of events most men and women behave
tolerably well. This means that they must frequently
repress their anti-social impulses. They find a vicarious
satisfaction for these impulses through films and stories
about gangsters, pirates, swindlers, bad bold barons and
the like. Now, the personified nation, as I have pointed
out already, is divine in size, strength and mystical
G 97

ENDS AND MEANS

superiority, but sub-human in moral character. The ethics
of international politics are precisely those of the gangster,
the pirate, the swindler, the bad bold baron. The exemplary
citizen can indulge in vicarious criminality, not only on the
films, but also in the field of international relations. The
divine nation of whom he is mystically a part bullies and
cheats, blusters and threatens in a way which many people
find profoundly satisfying to their sedulously repressed
lower natures. Submissive to the wife, kind to die children,
courteous to the neighbours, the soul of honesty in business,
the good citizen feels a thrill of delight when his country
‘takes a strong line,’ ‘enhances its prestige,’ ‘scores a
diplomatic victory,’ ‘increases its territory’ — in other words,
when it bluffs, bullies, swindles and steals. The nation is
a strange deity. It imposes difficult duties and demands the
greatest sacrifices and, because it does this and because
human beings have a hunger and thirst after righteousness,
it is loved. But it is also loved because it panders to the
lowest elements in human nature and because men and
women like to have excuses to feel pride and hatred,
because they long to taste even at second hand the joys
of criminality.

So much for the psychological causes of war — or, to be
more exact, the psychological background whose existence
makes possible the waging of wars. We have now to
consider the immediate causes of war. Ultimately, they
also are psychological; but since they display special forms
of human behaviour and since these special forms of
behaviour manifest themselves in certain highly organized
fields of activity, we prefer to call them ‘political* and
‘economic’ causes. For the purposes of classification, this
is convenient; but the convenience has its disadvantages.
We are apt to think of ‘politics’ and ‘economics’ as im¬
personal forces outside the domain of psychology, working
in some way on their own and apart from human beings.

WAR

To the extent that human beings are habit-bound and
conditioned by their social environment, politics and
economics possess a certain limited autonomy ; for wherever
a social organization exists, individuals tend to submit them¬
selves to the workings of its machinery. But man is not
made for the Sabbath, nor is he invariably willing to believe
that he is made for the Sabbath. To some extent his will
is free, and from time to time he remembers the fact and
alters the organizational machinery around him to suit
his needs. When this happens the conception of politics
and economics as autonomous forces, independent of human
psychology, becomes completely misleading. It is con¬
venient, I repeat, to class the economic and political causes
of war under separate headings. But we must not forget
that all such causes are ultimately psychological in their
nature.

(iii) The first of the political causes of war is war itself.
Many wars have been fought, among other reasons, for
the sake of seizing some strategically valuable piece of
territory, or in order to secure a ‘natural’ frontier — that
is to say, a frontier which it is easy to defend and from
which it is easy to launch attacks upon one’s neighbours.
Purely military advantages are almost as highly prized by
the rulers of nations as economic advantages. The pos¬
session of an army, navy and air force is in itself a reason
for going to war. ‘We must use our forces now,’ so runs
the militarist’s argument, ‘in order that we may be in a
position to use them to better effect next time.’

The part played by armaments in causing war may
properly be considered under this heading. All statesmen
insist that the armaments of their own country are solely
for purposes of defence. At the same time, all statesmen
insist that the existence of armaments in a foreign country
constitutes a reason for the creation of new armaments at
home. Every nation is perpetually taking more and more

99

ENDS AND MEANS

elaborate defensive measures against the more and more
elaborate defensive measures of all other nations. The
armament race would go on ad infinitum , if it did not
inevitably and invariably lead to war. Armaments lead to
war for two reasons. The first is psychological. The exist¬
ence of armaments in one country creates fear, suspicion,
resentment and hatred in neighbouring countries. In such
an atmosphere, any dispute easily becomes envenomed to
the point of being made a casus belli. The second is
technical in character. Armaments become obsolete, and
to-day the rate of obsolescence is rapid and accelerating.
At the present rate of technological progress an aeroplane
is likely to be out of date within a couple of years, or less.
This means that, for any given country, there is likely to
be an optimum moment of preparedness, a moment when
its equipment is definitely superior to that of other nations.
Within a very short time this superiority will disappear
and the nation will be faced with the task of scrapping its
now obsolescent equipment and building new equipment
equal to, or if possible better than, the new equipment of
its neighbours. The financial strain of such a process is
one which only the richest countries can stand for long.
For poorer nations it is unendurable. Hence there will
always be a strong temptation for the rulers of the poor
countries to declare war dining the brief period when their
own military equipment is superior to that of their rivals.

The fact that armaments are to a great extent manu¬
factured by private firms and that these private firms have
a financial interest in selling weapons of war to their own
and foreign governments is also a contributory cause of
war. This matter will be dealt with in a later section.

(iv) Wars may be made for the purpose of furthering a
religious or political creed. The Mohammedan invasions,
the Crusades, the Wars of Religion during the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, the French Revolutionary Wars,

ioo

WAR

the American Civil War, the Spanish Civil War are all
examples of what may be called ideological wars. True,
the makers of ideological wars were to some extent in¬
fluenced by non-ideological considerations — by greed for
wealth and dominion, by desire for glory, and the like.
But in all cases the ideological motive was paramount.
Unless there had been a desire to propagate a new creed
or defend an old, these wars would not have been fought.
Moreover, the fighting would not have been so bitter as
in fact it generally was, if the fighters had not been inspired
by religious or pseudo-religious faith. The aim of modem
nationalistic propaganda is to transform men’s normal
affection for their home into a fiercely exclusive worship of
the deified nation. Disputes between nations are beginning
to take on that uncompromising, fanatical quality which,
in the past, characterized the dealings between groups of
religious or political sectaries. It looks as though all future
wars will be as ferociously ideological as the old wars
of religion.

(v) In the past, many wars were fought for the sake of
the * glory ’ resulting from victory. The glory was generally
thought of as belonging to the leader of the army, or the
king his master. The Assyrian monarchs fought for glory ;
so did Alexander the Great; so did many mediaeval
kings and lords; so did Louis XIV and the dynasts of
eighteenth-century Europe; so did Napoleon; so perhaps
will the modem dictators. Where countries are ruled by
a single individual at the head of a military oligarchy, there
is always a danger that personal vanity and the thirst for
glory may act as motives driving him to embroil his country
in war.

(vi) Glory is generally regarded as the perquisite of the
general or king; but not always or exclusively. In a
country whose people are moved by strong nationalistic
feelings, glory can be thought of as pertaining in some

IOI

ENDS AND MEANS

degree to every member of the community. All Englishmen
shared in the glory of their Tudor monarchs ; all Frenchmen
in that of Louis XIV. During the French Revolution, a
deliberate attempt was made to popularize glory by means
of written and spoken propaganda. The attempt was fully
successful. Similar attempts are being made all over the
world to-day. The press, the radio and the film bring
national glory within the reach of all. When things go
badly at home and his people start to complain, the dictator
is always tempted to manufacture a little compensatory
glory abroad. Glory was a good deal cheaper in the past
than it is to-day. Moreover, the dictatorial war lord of
earlier times did not have to consider public opinion to the
same extent that even the most absolute of his modern
counterparts must do. The reason is simple. In the past
the glory-making machine was a small professional army.
So long as the battles were being fought at a reasonable
distance from their homes, people did not feel much concern
about this professional army; its sufferings did not affect
them personally, and when it won a victory, they got the
glory vicariously and free of charge. To-day every man
must serve as a conscript, and the aeroplane has made war
almost as dangerous for non-combatants as for front-line
fighters. Glory must be paid for by all ; war is now the affair
of every man, woman and child in the community. The
cost of modem war in life and money is so enormous and
must be so widely distributed, its possible effects on public
opinion and the structure of society so incalculable, that
even dictators hesitate to make their people fight except
where ‘national honour* and ‘vital interests* are concerned.
Twentieth-century armaments are an insurance against
small and trivial wars. On the other hand, they are an
absolute guarantee that when ‘vital interests* and ‘nadonal
honour’ are at stake, the resulting war shall be un¬
precedentedly destructive.

102

WAR

(vii) Of the economic causes of war the first in historical
importance is the desire of one nation to possess itself of
fertile territory belonging to another nation. Hitler, for
example, has stated that the Germans need new territory
in which to accommodate their surplus population. If
Germany goes to war with Russia it will be, in part at
least, to satisfy this real or imaginary craving for more
and better land.

In modem times wars have been fought not so much
for fertile lands as for the possession or control of raw
materials indispensable to industry. The iron ore of
Lorraine has been a bone of contention between France
and Germany. Japan’s activities in Manchuria and Northern
China can be explained, at least in part, by need for
minerals. Italian and German participation in the Spanish
Civil War has not been exclusively motivated by ideo¬
logical considerations. The two Fascist dictators have
their eyes on the copper of Rio Tinto, the iron of
Bilbao, which before the outbreak of war were under
English control.

(viii) Under capitalism all highly industrialized countries
need foreign markets. The reason for this is that, where
production is carried on for profit, it is difficult or impossible
to distribute enough purchasing power to enable people to
buy the things they themselves have produced. Defects
in domestic purchasing power have to be made up by
finding foreign markets. The imperialistic activities of the
great powers during the nineteenth century were directed
in large measure towards securing markets for their pro¬
ductions. But — and this is one of the strangest paradoxes
of the capitalist system — no sooner has a market been
secured, either by conquest or peaceful penetration, than
the very industrialists who manufacture for that market
proceed to equip the conquered or peacefully penetrated
country with the machinery that will enable it to dispense

103

ENDS AND MEANS

with their goods. Most of the industrially backward
countries have been equipped to provide for themselves,
and even to export a surplus, by those very capitalists who
originally used them as markets for their own productions.
Such a policy seems and, on a long view, actually is com¬
pletely lunatic. On a short view, however, it is sensible
enough. Capitalists are concerned not only to sell their
production, but also to invest their savings. Savings
invested in industrial concerns newly established in back¬
ward countries, where the standard of living is low and
labour can be sweated, generally bring enormous returns,
at any rate during the first years. For the sake of these
huge temporary profits capitalists are prepared to sacrifice
the smaller but more lasting profits to be derived from
using these same backward countries as markets for their
productions. In course of time the profits of oversea
investment diminish, and meanwhile the markets have been
lost for ever. But in the interval capitalists have earned a
huge return on their investments.

(ix) This brings us to an extremely important cause of
war — the pursuit by politically powerful minorities within
each nation of their own private interests. The worst, or
at any rate the most conspicuous, offenders in this respect
are the manufacturers of armaments. It is unnecessary for
me to cite facts and figures ; they are available in a number
of well-documented, easily accessible books and pamphlets.1
It is enough to state the following simple generalizations.
War and die preparation for war are profitable to the arms
manufacturer. The more heavily the nations arm, the
greater his profits. This being so, he is tempted to foment
war scares, to pit government against government, to use
every means in his power, from bribery to ‘patriotic’
propaganda, in order to stultify all efforts at disarmament.

1 See the relevant works of Seldes and Noel Baker, and the pamphlets
published by the Union of Democratic Control.

104

WAR

The historical records show that the manufacturers of
armaments have only too frequently succumbed to these
temptations.

One of the measures common to the programmes of all
the world’s left-wing parties is the nationalization of the
arms industry. To a certain extent all states are already
in the armaments business. In England, for example, the
government arsenals produce about five-twelfths of the
nation’s arms, private firms about seven-twelfths. Complete
nationalization would thus be merely the wider application
of a well-established principle.

Now the complete nationalization of the arms industry
would certainly achieve one good result : it would liberate
governments from the influence of socially irresponsible
capitalists, interested solely in making large profits. So far,
so good. But the trouble is that this particular reform does
not go far enough — goes, in fact, hardly anywhere at all.
Armaments are armaments, whoever manufactures them.
A plane from a government factory can kill as many
women and children as a plane from a factory owned by
a private capitalist. Furthermore, the fact that armaments
were being manufactured by the state would serve in some
measure to legalize and justify an intrinsically abominable
practice. The mass of unthinking public opinion would
come to feel that an officially sanctioned arms industry was
somehow respectable. Consequently the total abolition of
the whole evil business would become even more difficult
than it is at present. This difficulty would be enhanced
by the fact that a central executive having complete control
of the arms industry would be very reluctant to part with
such an effective instrument of tyranny. For an instrument
of tyranny is precisely what a nationalized armaments
industry potentially is. The state is more powerful than
any private employer, and the personnel of a completely
nationalized arms industry could easily be dragooned and

io5

ENDS AND MEANS

bribed into becoming a kind of technical army under the
control of the executive.

Finally, we must consider the effect of nationalization
upon international affairs. Under the present dispensa¬
tion adventurers like the late Sir Basil Zaharoff are free
(within the limits imposed by the licensing system) to
travel about, fanning the flames of international discord
and peddling big guns and submarines. This is a state
of things which should certainly be changed. But the
state of things under a regime of nationalization is only
a little better. Once in business, even governments like
to make a profit; and the arms business will not cease to
be profitable because it has been nationalized. Then,
as now, industrially backward states will have to buy
arms from the highly industrialized countries. All highly
industrialized states will desire to sell armaments, not only
for the sake of profits, but also in order to exercise control
over the policy of their customers. Inevitably, this will
result in the growth of intense rivalry between the industrial¬
ized powers — yet another rivalry, yet another potential
cause of international discord and war. It would seem,
then, that the nationalization of the armaments industry is
merely the substitution of one evil for another. The new
evil will be less manifest, less morally shocking than the
old; but it is by no means certain that, so far as war is
concerned, the results of nationalization will be perceptibly
better than the results of private manufacture. What is
needed is not the nationalization of the arms industry, but
its complete abolition. Abolition will come when the
majority wish it to come. The process of persuading the
majority to wish it will be described in the next chapter.

The manufacturers of armaments are not the only
‘merchants of death.* To some extent, indeed, we all
deserve that name. For in so far as we vote for govern¬
ments that impose tariffs and quotas, in so far as we

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support policies of re-armament, in so far as we consent
to our country’s practice of economic, political and military
imperialism, in so far even as we behave badly in private
life, we are all doing our bit to bring the next war nearer.
The responsibility of the rich and the powerful, however,
is greater than that of ordinary men ; for they are better
paid for what they do to bring war closer and they know
more clearly what they are about. Less spectacularly
mischievous than the armament makers, but in reality
hardly less harmful, are the speculative investors who
preach imperialism because they can derive such high
returns on their capital in backward countries. To the
nation as a whole its colonies may be unprofitable, and
actually costly. But to the politically powerful minority
of financiers with capital to invest, of industrialists with
surplus goods to dispose of, these same colonies may be
sources of handsome profits.

The small, but politically powerful, minority of financiers
and industrialists is also interested in various forms of
economic imperialism. By a judicious use of their re¬
sources, the capitalists of highly industrialized nations stake
out claims for themselves within nominally independent
countries. Those claims are then represented as being the
claims of their respective nations, and the quarrels between
the various financial interests concerned become quarrels
between states. The peace of the world has frequently
been endangered, in order that oil magnates might grow
a little richer.

In the press, which is owned by rich men, the interests
of the investing minority are always identified (doubtless
in perfectly good faith) with those of the nation as a whole.
Constantly repeated statements come to be accepted as
truths. Innocent and ignorant, most newspaper readers
are convinced that the private interests of the rich are really
public interests and become indignant whenever these

107

ENDS AND MEANS

interests are menaced by a foreign power, intervening on
behalf of its investing minority. The interests at stake
are the interests of the few; but the public opinion which
demands the protection of these interests is often a genuine
expression of mass emotion. The many really feel and
believe that the dividends of the few are worth fighting for.

(x) Remedies and Alternatives. — So much for the nature
and causes of war. We must now consider, first, the
methods for preventing war from breaking out and for
checking it once it has begun and, second, the political
alternatives and psychological equivalents to war.

It will be best to begin with the existing methods of war
preventions. These methods are not conspicuously success¬
ful for two good reasons: first, they are in many cases of
such a nature that they cannot conceivably produce the
desired results and, second, even when intrinsically excel¬
lent, they are not calculated to eliminate the existing causes
of war or to provide psychologically equivalent substitutes
for war. Accordingly, after describing and discussing the
methods at present in use, I shall go on to outline the
methods which should be used, if the causes of war are
to be eliminated and suitable alternatives to war created.

The hopes which so many men and women of good will
once rested in the League of Nations have been dis¬
appointed. The failure of the League of Nations to secure
the pacification of the world is due in part to historical
accident, but mainly to the fact that it was based on entirely
wrong principles. The historical accident which stultified
the League’s ability to do good was the refusal of the
Americans to join it and the exclusion for many years of
the ‘enemy powers’ and Russia. But even if America,
Germany and Russia had all been original members, it is
still as certain as any contingency can be that the League
would not have produced the good results expected of it.
The League admits to membership any community, how-

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ever small, which possesses an army of its own. No
community, however large, which does not possess an
army is eligible. In practice and by implication the League
defines a nation as ‘a society organized for war.’ And
effectively this is the only definition of a nation that
applies to all the existing members of the class. Every
other definition, in terms of race, of colour, of language,
of culture and even of simple topography, is proved to
be inadequate by the existence of exceptions. Formally
and in fact, the League of Nations is a league of societies
organized for war.

The militarism which is built into the very definition of
the League finds expression in the means whereby, under
its present constitution, it is proposed to secure peace.
The framers of the League Covenant did what many of
the framers of the American Constitution desired to do,
but were fortunately dissuaded by Alexander Hamilton
from doing : they inserted a clause decreeing first economic
and then military sanctions against an ‘aggressor.’

Sanctions are objectionable for exactly the same reasons as
war is objectionable. Military sanctions are war. Economic
sanctions, if applied with vigour, must inevitably lead to
war-like reactions on the part of the nation to which they
are applied, and these war-like reactions can only be
countered by military sanctions. Sanctionists call their
brand of war by high-sounding names. We must not
allow ourselves to be deceived by mere words. In the
actual circumstances of the present day, ‘collective security’
means a system of military alliances opposed to another
system of military alliances. The first system calls itself
the League; the second is nominated in advance ‘the
Aggressor.’

Once war has broken out, nations will consult their own
interests whether to fight or remain neutral ; they will not
permit any international agreement to dictate their course

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ENDS AND MEANS

of action. Speaking on November 20th, 1936, Mr. Eden
stated that ‘our armaments may be used in bringing help
to a victim of aggression in any case where, in our judgment,
it would be proper under the provision of the Covenant to
do so. I use the word “may” deliberately, since in such
an instance there is no automatic obligation to take military
action. It is, moreover, right that this should be so, for
nations cannot be expected to incur automatic military
obligations save for areas where their vital interests are
concerned/ Upholding the League Covenant is not
regarded as a vital interest by any nation. Nor, so far as
Article XVI is concerned, ought it to be so regarded.
Justice, like charity, begins at home, and no government
has the moral right gratuitously to involve its subjects in
war. War is so radically wrong that any international
agreement which provides for the extension of hostilities
from a limited area to the whole world is manifestly based
upon unsound principles. Modem war destroys with the
maximum of efficiency and the maximum of indiscrimina¬
tion, and therefore entails the commission of injustices far
more numerous and far worse than any it is intended to
redress. It is worth remarking in this context that it is
now possible to be an orthodox Catholic and a complete
pacifist. To condemn war as such and to refuse, as the
Quakers and other Protestant sects have done, to participate
in any war whatsoever, is heretical. St. Thomas has laid
it down that war is justified when waged in defence of
the vital interests of a community. Starting from the
Thomist position, certain Catholic thinkers, notably in
Holland and England, have reached the conclusion that,
though it may be heretical to condemn war as war, one
can be a complete pacifist in relation to war in its con¬
temporary form and still remain orthodox. War is justified
when it is waged in defence of the vital interests of the
community. But the nature of modem war is such that

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WAR

the vital interests of the community cannot be defended
by it; on the contrary, they must inevitably suffer more
from the waging of war than they would suffer by non-
resistance to violence. Therefore, in the circumstances of
the present time, complete pacifism is reasonable, right and
even orthodox. Bertrand Russell’s pacifism is based upon
exactly the same considerations of expediency as that of
these neo-Thomists. His and their arguments are peculiarly
relevant to the problem of sanctions. For what the
sanctionists demand is that wars which, in the very nature
of things, cannot do anything except destroy the vital
interests of the communities concerned in them, should
be automatically transformed from wars between two or
a few nations into universal combats, bringing destruction
and injustice to all the peoples of the world.

To this contention sanctionists reply by asserting that
the mere display of great military force by League members
will be enough to deter would-be aggressors. The greater
your force, the slighter the probability that you will have
to use it; therefore, they argue, re-arm for the sake of
peace. The facts of history do not bear out this contention.
Threats do not frighten the determined nor do the desperate
shrink before a display of overwhelming force. Moreover,
in the contemporary world, there is no reason to suppose
that the force mustered against an aggressor will be over¬
whelming. ‘The League’ and ‘the Aggressor’ will be two
well-matched sets of allied powers. Indeed, the com¬
position of these two alliances is already pretty well settled.
France, Russia, and probably England are booked to appear
as ‘The League’; Italy, Germany and Japan as ‘the
Aggressor.’ The smaller nations will remain neutral, or
back whichever side they think is likely to win. As for
the sanctionist’s exhortation to re-arm for the League and
for peace, this is merely a modem version of si vis pacem ,
para lellum. Those who prepare for war start up an

in

ENDS AND MEANS

armament race and, in due course, get the war they
prepare for.

According to sanctionist theory, the League is to take
military action in order to bring about a just settlement of
disputes. But the prospects of achieving a just setdement
at the end of a League war are no better than at the end of
any other kind of war. Wars result in just settlements only
when the victors behave with magnanimity, only when
they make amends for violence by being just and humane.
But when wars have been fierce and prolonged, when the
destruction has been indiscriminate and on an enormous
scale, it is extraordinarily difficult for the victor to behave
magnanimously, or even with justice. Passions ran so high
in die last war that it was psychologically impossible for
the conquerors to make a just and humane setdement.
In spite of Wilson and his Fourteen Points, they imposed
the Treaty of Versailles — the treaty which made it in¬
evitable that a Hitler should arise and that Germany should
seek revenge for past humiliations. A war waged by
League members allied to impose military sanctions on an
aggressor will probably be at least as destructive as the
war of 1914-18 — possibly far more destructive. Is there
any reason to suppose that the victorious League — that is,
if it is victorious — will be in a more magnanimous mood
than were the Allies in 1918? There is no such reason.
The sanctionists are cherishing the old illusion of ‘the war
to end war.’ But wars do not end war ; in most cases they
result in an unjust peace that makes inevitable the outbreak
of a war of revenge.

In this context it is worth mentioning the project for an
‘international police force’ sponsored by the New Common¬
wealth and approved, so far as the international air-police
force is concerned, by the British Labour Party. First,
we must point out that the phrase ‘international police
force’ is completely misleading. Police action against an

WAR

individual criminal is radically different from action by a
nation or group of nations against a national criminal.
The police act with the maximum of precision; they go
out and arrest the guilty person. Nations and groups of
nations act through their armed forces, which can only act
with the maximum of imprecision, killing, maiming, starving
and ruining millions of human beings, the overwhelming
majority of whom have committed no crime of any sort.
The process, which all self-righteous militarists, from plain
jingo to sanctionist and international policemen, describe
as ‘punishing a guilty nation,’ consists in mangling and
murdering innumerable innocent individuals. To draw
analogies between an army and a police force, between war
(however ‘righteous’ its aim) and the prevention of crime,
is utterly misleading. An ‘international police force’ is
not a police force and those who call it by that name are
trying, consciously or unconsciously, to deceive the public.
What they assimilate to the, on the whole, beneficent
policeman is in fact an army and air force, equipped to
slaughter and destroy. We shall never learn to think
correctly unless we call things by their proper names.
The international police force, if it were ever constituted,
would not be a police force; it would be a force for
perpetrating indiscriminate massacres. If you approve of
indiscriminate massacres, then you must say so. You have
no right to deceive the unwary by calling your massacre-
force by the same name as the force which controls traffic
and arrests burglars.

This International Massacre-Force does not yet exist and,
quite apart from any question of desirability, it seems almost
infinitely improbable that it ever will exist. How is such
a force to be recruited? how officered? how armed?
where located? Who is to decide when it is to be used
and against whom? To whom will it owe allegiance and
how is its loyalty to be guaranteed? Is it likely that the
H 1 13

ENDS AND MEANS

staff officers of the various nations will draw up plans for
the invasion and conquest of their own country? or that
aviators will loyally co-operate in the slaughter of their
own people? How can all nations be persuaded to con¬
tribute men and materials towards the international force?
Should the contributions be equal? If they are not equal
and a few great powers supply the major part of the force,
what is to prevent these powers from establishing a military
tyranny over the whole world? The project sponsored by
the New Commonwealth and the Labour Party combines
all the moral and political vices of militarism with all the
hopeless impracticability of a Utopian dream. In the
language of the stud book, the International Police Force
may be described as by Machiavelli out of News from
Nowhere.

Morality and practical common sense are at one in
demanding that efforts to create an ‘International Police
Force’ shall be strenuously resisted and that Article XVI
shall be removed from the Covenant. The effort to stop
war, once it has broken out, by means of military sanctions
or the action of an international army and air force is
foredoomed to failure. War cannot be stopped by more
war. All that more war can do is to widen the area of
destruction and place new obstacles in the way of reaching
a just and humane settlement of international disputes.
It should be the business of the League to concentrate all
its energies on the work of preventing wars from breaking
out. This it can do by developing existing machinery for
the peaceable settlement of international disputes; by
extending the field of international co-operation in the
study and solution of outstanding social problems; and
finally, by devising means for eliminating the causes
of war.

About the machinery of peaceful settlement and inter¬
national co-operation it is unnecessary to say very much.

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WAR

A machine may be exquisitely ingenious and of admirable
workmanship, but if people refuse to use it, or use it badly,
it will be almost or completely useless. This is tbe case
with the machinery of peaceful change and international
co-operation. It has been in existence for a long time, and
if the governments of the various nations had always wished
to make use of it, it would have served its purpose — the
preservation of peace — with admirable efficiency. But
governments have not always wished to make use of it.
Wherever ‘national honour’ and ‘vital interests’ were
concerned, they have preferred to threaten or actually
make use of violence. Even in cases where they have
consented to employ the machinery of peaceful settle¬
ment, they have sometimes displayed such bad will that
the machine has been unable to function. A good example
of the way in which bad will can prevent even the best
arbitral machinery from producing the results it is meant
to produce is supplied by the history of the dispute between
Chile and Peru over the provinces of Tacna and Arica.
The dispute began in 1883, when the Treaty of Ancon
provided that the two provinces should remain in the
possession of Chile for a period of ten years, after which
a plebiscite should be held, to decide whether the territory
should remain Chilean or revert to Peruvian sovereignty.
The treaty was ambiguous inasmuch as it did not specify
whether the plebiscite should be held immediately after the
expiry of the ten-year period, nor by which power and
under whose laws it should be organized. The Chileans
made use of this ambiguity to delay the holding of the
plebiscite until such time as, by intimidating and expelling
the Peruvian inhabitants and importing Chileans, they
should be sure of securing a majority. Direct negotiations
were tried and failed. An appeal to the League of Nations
in 1920 proved abortive. Finally, arbitration by the
President of the United States was accepted in 1925 and it

”5

ENDS AND MEANS

was agreed that a plebiscite should be held under the auspices
of a commission, presided over by General Pershing.
But the Chileans still had no intention of allowing the
machine to work. Pershing retired in 1926 and his suc¬
cessor, General Lassiter, had to declare that the commission
must be dissolved without fulfilling its mission. Finally,
in 1928, under friendly pressure from the United States,
the two countries resumed diplomatic relations (they had
been interrupted for nearly twenty years) and, in 1929,
agreed to accept the arbitration of President Hoover, who
finally settled the matter by assigning Tacna to Peru and
Arica to Chile. This international quarrel lasted for forty-
six years. From the first both sides had agreed to make
use of the machinery of peaceful change (a plebiscite and
the payment of a monetary compensation). But from the
first one of the parties refused to allow the machine to
work as it should. In the end sheer boredom took the
place of good will. The Chileans couldn’t be bothered
to persist any longer in their intransigence. The machine
was permitted to function and within a few months turned
out the peaceful solution which it had been expressly
contrived to produce.

The case of the Anglo-American dispute over the
boundary between Maine and New Brunswick is very
similar to that of the more recent dispute between Chile
and Peru. After years of bickering, the arbitration of the
King of the Netherlands was accepted in 1827; but when,
in 1831, he made his award, the United States rejected it.
The dispute dragged on, becoming progressively more
acrimonious, for another eleven years. Then, growing
weary of the whole matter, both sides decided that it
was time to make a settlement. Lord Ashburton was sent
to Washington to negotiate with the Secretary of State,
Daniel Webster, and in a very short time the Maine
boundary and a number of other outstanding differences

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WAR

between the two countries were amicably settled. Here
again the machinery of peaceful change produced the
results it was designed to produce only when the parties
concerned were willing to use it as it was meant to be
used. Another significant point is that the negotiations
between the two countries were greatly facilitated by the
fact that the two negotiators, Webster and Ashburton,
were personal friends and enjoyed, in their respective
countries, a high reputation for integrity and good sense.
Consequently the process of negotiation was easy and its
results, though attacked by extremists on both sides of
the Atlantic, were acceptable to the majority of ordinary,
moderate men, who trusted in the judgment and honesty
of the negotiators. For the arbitrator even more, perhaps,
than for the negotiator, character is the supreme asset.
Any suspicion that the judge in an international dispute is
partial, corrupt or merely injudicious, is enough to imperil
the success of the arbitration. Here again we see that the
machine itself is of secondary importance; what matters
is the will, the intelligence, and the moral character of the
men who use the machine. That machinery should exist
and that it should be the best that legal and administrative
ingenuity can devise is essential. The mere fact that the
machinery is there is a hint to the disputants that they
ought to use it, rather than resort to armed violence.
Opportunity helps to make the good man as well as the
thief. It is important, as we have seen, to deliver men
from evil by reducing the number of opportunities for
behaving badly. It is equally important to create new
opportunities for behaving well, to provide desirable alter¬
natives to the evil courses prescribed by tradition. Such
institutions as the Hague Court and, in its arbitral and
co-operative capacity, the League of Nations, are merely
pieces of judicial and administrative machinery and can
do nothing of themselves to preserve peace or cure the

117

ENDS AND MEANS

world of its militaristic insanity. Their existence, however,
is an invitation and an opportunity to use peaceful instead
of violent methods; and the better the machinery, the more
effectively will men be able to exploit the opportunity,
once it has been seized.

All the existing methods of preventing war are
characterized by one or other of two principal defects.
Either they are, like military sanctions, intrinsically bad
and so incapable of producing any but bad results —
(the results of using unlimited violence and cunning
are exactly the same, whether you call the process
plain war or employ such charming euphemisms as
‘Sanctions,’ ‘Collective Security,’ ‘International Police
Action’) — or else they are merely pieces of more or less
well-designed machinery, incapable by themselves of affect¬
ing the fundamental causes of war. This is true even of
the special pieces of machinery set up from time to time
since the War for the special purpose of eliminating some
at least of the economic, political and military causes of war.
The Naval Conference of 1927 and the general Disarma¬
ment Conference of 1932-34 were excellent pieces of
machinery. But unfortunately none of the parties con¬
cerned showed the smallest desire to make use of them.
During the 1927 conference the Bethlehem Shipbuilding
Corporation, the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock
Company, and the American Brown Boveri Corporation
employed a Mr. Shearer to make anti-British propaganda
both at Geneva and in the United States, with a view
to preventing any agreement on a reduction in naval
armaments from being reached. Mr. Shearer was extremely
active, and, feeling that he had been inadequately re¬
munerated, sued the three companies in 1929 for a quarter
of a million dollars, ‘ for services rendered.’ The companies
could probably have saved their money. Even without
Mr. Shearer’s intervention, it is pretty certain that the

118

WAR

negotiations would have resulted in no serious diminution
of the British and American navies. At the general Dis¬
armament Conference the determination not to use the
machine was manifested even more clearly than in 1927.
No government was willing so much as to consider
unilateral disarmament, and even the Soviet suggestion of
complete disarmament all round was ruled out of order
before the Conference had begun. The discussions dragged
on for two years — discussions concerned not with dis¬
armament, but with the kind of weapons to be used in the
next war. Finally the Conference was adjourned sine die
and the various powers set to work to re-arm on a scale
unprecedented in human history.

The same obstinate refusal to make use of intrinsically
excellent machinery has been displayed at the various
conferences on economic and monetary problems. All the
economists are agreed that international trade cannot
become normal unless tariff barriers are lowered, the quota
system abolished, and some satisfactory medium of inter¬
national exchange established. Nor is this all. Everyone
knows that economic warfare, carried on by competitive
currency devaluations, by tariffs, quotas and export bounties,
is bound to lead sooner or later to military warfare. Never¬
theless, no government has shown itself ready to make use
of any of the excellent machinery specially designed for
the purpose of solving the world’s economic problems.

It is the same with the Mandate System. The Mandate
System is a machine which makes it possible for backward
peoples to be placed under the control of an international
authority, not under the exclusive rule of a single nation.
In regard to colonies, the world is at present divided into
two camps of Haves and Have-nots. The Haves adopt
the motto of the British Navy League : What I have I hold.
The Have-nots demand a place in the sun, or in more vulgar
language, a share in the loot. In recent years these demands

“9

ENDS AND MEANS

have become particularly insistent and menacing. The
Haves have consequently found it necessary to re-arm,
among other reasons, in order to defend their colonies.
In the days when sea-power was all important, the defence
of a ‘far-flung empire’ was relatively easy. To-day it is,
to say the least of it, exceedingly difficult. It has been
repeatedly suggested that the imperial powers should re¬
nounce their claim to exclusive ownership of colonies and,
using the machinery of the Mandate System, place their
colonial territories under international control. By doing
this they would allay the envy and resentment of the
Have-not countries, appreciably lessen the probability of
war, and solve the, at present, almost insoluble problem of
imperial defence. This suggestion has not been acted upon
by any colony-owning country. On the contrary, it has
been indignantly rejected. All the governments concerned,
from that of Great Britain to that of Portugal, have ex¬
pressed the determination to shed the last drop of their
subjects’ blood before yielding a foot of colonial territory.
The British government has done more than refuse to
transfer its colonies to the League of Nations: it has
chosen the moment when it no longer possesses command
of the seas and when, even if it did possess it, such command
would be of little use, to reverse the free-trade policy by
means of which its predecessors (though at the head of a
country incomparably stronger and less vulnerable than
contemporary Britain) thought fit to placate the envy of
other powers. It has closed the doors of its colonies to
the trade of other nations, thus forcibly reminding them of
their own poverty and giving them new grievances against
the British Empire. It is one of the absurd paradoxes of
the present situation that those Englishmen who are most
anxious to establish friendly relations with the dictatorships,
especially Germany and Italy, are precisely those who are
loudest in their denunciations of the only scheme by means

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of which these Have-not States might be placated. Being
militarists, they want to make friends with other militarists;
being jingoes, they cannot accept the conditions upon which
such a friendship might be formed — the conditions upon
which, incidentally, it might be possible to get rid of
militarism altogether. The machinery of the Mandate
System is there, ready to be used; but nobody is willing
to extend its present operations and, even in the existing
mandated territories, the mandatory powers are tending to
disregard their international obligations and to treat their
mandates as plain unvarnished colonies.

Machinery has been devised by the League for the
purpose of securing the elementary rights of individuals
belonging to minorities, racially or linguistically distinct
from the majority of the inhabitants of their country.
From the first the governments in control of countries
containing such minorities have shown themselves reluctant
to make use of this machinery, and recently the reluctance
has been transformed, in a number of cases, into downright
refusal. It is known by all concerned that maltreatment
of minorities begets bad feeling, both at home and abroad.
Nevertheless, the governments concerned refuse to use the
machinery of conciliation and obstinately persist in oppress¬
ing those of their unhappy subjects who have noses of
the wrong shape or speak the wrong language.

The machinery for peaceful change is ready and waiting;
but nobody uses it, because nobody wants to use it.
Wherever we turn we find that the real obstacles to peace
are human will and feeling, human convictions, prejudices,
opinions. If we want to get rid of war we must get rid
first of all its psychological causes. Only when this has
been done will the rulers of the nations even desire to
get rid of the economic and political causes.

By definition and in fact the League of Nations is, as we
have seen, a league of societies prepared for war. That

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ENDS AND MEANS

those who rule such essentially militaristic societies should
take the initiative in eliminating the causes of war is,
of course, enormously improbable. One cannot be the
ruler of a militaristic society unless one is oneself a
militarist, unless one accepts the beliefs and cherishes the
sentiments which result in a militaristic policy. This being
so, it is perfectly clear that most of the work of transforming
the modem militaristic community into a community that
desires peace and that proves the genuineness of its desire
by pursuing only such policies as make for peace, will have
to be done by private individuals, acting either alone or in
association. Reforms are seldom initiated by the rulers of
a nation. They have their source at the periphery and
work gradually inwards towards the centre, till at last the
strength of the reforming movement is so great that its
leaders either become the government or the existing
government adopts its principles and carries out its policies.
With the work which will have to be done by private
individuals and associations, I shall speak in the next
chapter. In what remains of the present chapter I shall
consider one by one the psychological causes of war, as
outlined in earlier paragraphs, and point out how they
might be eliminated.

(i) War, as we have seen, is tolerated, and by some
even welcomed, because peace-time occupations seem
boring, humiliating and pointless.

The application of the principle of self-government to
industry and business should go far to deliver men and
women in subordinate positions from the sense of helpless
humiliation which is induced by the need of obeying the
arbitrary orders of irresponsible superiors; and the fact of
being one of a small co-operative group should do some¬
thing to make the working life of its members seem more
interesting. Heightened interest can also be obtained by
suitably rearranging the individual’s tasks. Fourier insisted

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long ago on the desirableness of variety in labour, and in
recent years his suggestion has been acted upon, experi¬
mentally, in a number of factories in Germany, America,
Russia and elsewhere. The result has been a diminution
of boredom and, in many cases, an increase in the volume
of production. Tasks may be varied slightly, as when a
worker in a cigarette factory is shifted from the job of
feeding tobacco into a machine to the job of packing and
weighing. Or they may be varied radically and funda¬
mentally, as when workers alternate between industrial and
agricultural labour. In both cases the psychological effects
seem to be good.

(ii) It was suggested that the war-time decline in the
suicide rate was due, among other things, to the heightened
significance and purposefulness of life during a national
emergency. At such a time the end for which all are
striving is clearly seen; duties are simple and explicit; the
vagueness and uncertainty of peace-time ideals gives place
to the sharp definition of the war-time ideal, which is:
victory at all costs; the bewildering complexities of the
peace-time social patterns are replaced by the beautifully
simple pattern of a community fighting for its existence.
Danger heightens the sense of social solidarity and quickens
patriotic enthusiasm. Life takes on sense and meaning and
is lived at a high pitch of emotional intensity.

The apparent pointlessness of modem life in time of peace
and its lack of significance and purpose are due to the fact
that, in the Western world at least, the prevailing cosmology
is what Mr. Gerald Heard has called the ‘ mechanomorphic ’
cosmology of modern science. The universe is regarded
as a great machine pointlessly grinding its way towards
ultimate stagnation and death; men are tiny offshoots of
the universal machine, running down to their own private
death; physical life is the only real life; mind is a mere
product of body; personal success and material well-being

123

ENDS AND MEANS

are the ultimate measures of value, the things for which
a reasonable person should live. Introduced suddenly to
this mechanomorphic cosmology, many of the Polynesian
races have refused to go on multiplying their species and
are in process of dying of a kind of psychological con¬
sumption. Europeans are of tougher fibre than the South
Sea Islanders, and besides, they have had nearly three
hundred years in which to become gradually acclimatized
to the new cosmology. But even they have felt the effects
of mechanomorphism. They move through life hollow
with pointlessness, trying to fill the void within them by
external stimuli — newspaper reading, day-dreaming at the
films, radio music and chatter, the playing and above all
the watching of games, ‘good times’ of every sort. Mean¬
while any doctrine that offers to restore point and purpose
to life is eagerly welcomed. Hence the enormous success
of the nationalistic and communistic idolatries which deny
any meaning to the universe as a whole, but insist on the
importance and significance of certain arbitrarily selected
parts of the whole — the deified nation, the divine class.

Nationalism first became a religion in Germany during
the Napoleonic wars. Communism took its rise some fifty
years later. Those who did not become devotees of the
new idolatries either remained Christians, clinging to
doctrines that became intellectually less and less accept¬
able with every advance of science, or else accepted
mechanomorphism and became convinced of the pointless¬
ness of life. The World War was a product of nationalism
and was tolerated and even welcomed by the great masses
of those who found life pointless. War brought only a
passing relief to the victims of mechanomorphic philosophy.
Disillusion, fatigue and cynicism succeeded the initial
enthusiasm, and when it was over, the sense of pointlessness
became a yawning abyss that demanded to be filled with
ever more and intenser distractions, ever better ‘good

124

WAR

times.’ But good times are not a meaning or a purpose;
the void could never be filled by them. Consequently
when the nationalists and communists appeared with their
simple idolatries and their proclamation that, though life
might mean nothing as a whole it did at least possess a
temporary and partial significance, there was a powerful re¬
action away from the cynicism of the post-war years.
Millions of young people embraced the new idolatrous
religions, found a meaning in life, a purpose for their
existence, and were ready, in consequence, to make sacrifices,
accept hardships, display courage, fortitude, temperance and
indeed all the virtues except the essential and primary ones,
without which all the rest may serve merely as the means
for doing evil more effectively. Love and awareness —
these are the primary, essential virtues. But nationalism
and communism are partial and exclusive idolatries that
inculcate hatred, pride, hardness, and impose that intolerant
dogmatism that cramps intelligence and narrows the field
of interest and sympathetic awareness.

The ‘heads’ of pointlessness has as its ‘tails* idolatrous
nationalism and communism. Our world oscillates from
a neurasthenia that welcomes war as a relief from boredom
to a mania that results in war being made. The cure for
both these fearful maladies is the same — the inculcation of
a cosmology more nearly corresponding to reality than
either mechanomorphism or the grotesque philosophies
underlying the nationalistic and communistic idolatries.
This cosmology and the ethical consequences of its accept¬
ance will be discussed in detail in a later chapter. My next
task is to deal with the part that can and must be played
by private individuals in the carrying through of desirable
changes.

125

Chapter X

INDIVIDUAL WORK FOR REFORM

WE have seen that the only effective methods for
carrying out large-scale social reforms are non-violent
methods. Violence produces only the results of violence
and the attempt to impose reforms by violent methods is
therefore foredoomed to failure. The only cases in which
violent methods succeed are those where initial violence is
rapidly followed by compensatory acts of justice, humane¬
ness, sympathetic understanding and the like. This being
so, mere common sense demands that we shall begin with
non-violence and not run the risk of stultifying the whole
process of reform by using violence, even as an initial
measure.

Non-violent methods of reform are likely to succeed
only where a majority of the population is either actively
in favour of the reform in question, or at least not
prepared actively to oppose it. Where the majority is
not either favourable or passively neutral to the reform,
violent attempts to impose it are certain to lead to
failure.

In communities ruled by hereditary monarchs it has
sometimes happened that an exceptionally enlightened
king has tried to make reforms which, though intrinsically
desirable, did not happen to be desired by the mass of his
people. Akhnaton’s is a case in point. Such efforts
at reform made by rulers too far advanced to be under¬
stood by their subjects are likely to meet with partial or
complete failure.

126

INDIVIDUAL WORK FOR REFORM

In countries where rulers are chosen by popular vote
there is no likelihood that startlingly novel and unacceptable
reforms will be initiated by the central authority. In such
countries the movement for reform must always start at
the periphery and move towards the centre. Private
individuals, either alone or in groups, must formulate the
idea of reform and must popularize it among the masses.
When it has become sufficiently popular, it can be in¬
corporated into the legislation of the community.

In the modem world, as we have seen, the great obstacle
to all desirable change is war. The cardinal, the indis¬
pensable reform is therefore a reform in the present policy
of national communities in regard to one another. To-day
all nations conduct their foreign policy on militaristic
principles. Some are more explicitly, more noisily and
vulgarly militaristic than others; but all, even those that
call themselves democratic and pacific, consistently act
upon the principles of militarism. It is hardly conceivable
that any desirable reform in this direction should be
initiated by those who now hold political power. The
movement of reform must therefore come from private
individuals. It is the business of these private individuals
to persuade the majority of their fellows that the policy of
pacifism is preferable to that of militarism. When and
only when they have succeeded, it will become possible
to change those militaristic national policies which make
the outbreak of another war all but inevitable and which,
by doing this, hold up the whole process of desirable
change.

It may be objected that the majority of men and women
all over the world ardently desire peace and that therefore
there is no need for private individuals to make propaganda
in favour of peace. In reply to this I may quote a pro¬
foundly significant phrase from The Imitation. , ‘All men
desire peace, but very few desire those things which make

127

ENDS AND MEANS

for peace.* The truth is, of course, that one can never
have something for nothing. The voters in every country
desire peace. But hardly any of them are prepared to pay
the price of peace. In the modern world the ‘things that
make for peace’ are disarmament, unilateral if necessary;
renunciation of exclusive empires; abandonment of the
policy of economic nationalism; determination in all
circumstances to use the methods of non-violence; system¬
atic training in such methods. How many of the so-called
peace-lovers of the world love these indispensable con¬
ditions of peace? Few indeed. The business of private
individuals is to persuade their fellows that the things that
make for peace are not merely useful as means to certain
political ends, but are also valuable as methods for training
individuals in the supreme art of non-attachment.

Individuals can work either alone or in association with
other like-minded individuals. The work of the solitary
individual is mainly preliminary to the work of the indi¬
viduals in association. The solitary individual can under¬
take one or both of two important tasks: the task of
intellectual clarification; the task of dissemination. He
can be a theorist, a sifter of ideas, a builder of systems;
or he can be a propagandist either of his own or others’
ideas. To put it crudely, he can be either a writer or a
public speaker. Both these tasks are useful and even
indispensable, but both, I repeat, are preliminary to the
greater and more difficult task which must be accomplished
by individuals in association. Their task is to act upon
the ideas of the solitary writer or speaker, to make practical
applications of what were merely theories, to construct
here and now small working-models of the better society
imagined by the prophets; to educate themselves here and
now into specimens of those ideal individuals described by
the founders of religions. Success in such a venture is
doubly valuable. If the success is on a large scale, the

128

INDIVIDUAL WORK FOR REFORM
existing social and economic order will have undergone
a perceptible modification for the better. At the same
time the demonstration that the new theories may be made
to produce desirable results in practice will act as the best
possible form of propaganda on their behalf. Most people
find example more convincing than argument. The fact
that a theory has actually worked is a better recommenda¬
tion for its soundness than any amount of ingenious
dialectics.

At almost every period and in almost every country
private individuals have associated for the purpose of
initiating desirable change and of working out for them¬
selves a way of life superior to that of their contemporaries.
In the preservation and development of civilization these
groups of devoted individuals have played a very important
part and are destined, I believe, to play a part no less
important in the future. Let us briefly consider the lessons
to be drawn from their history.

The first condition of success is that all the members of
such associations should accept the same philosophy of
life and should be whole-heartedly determined to take
their full share in the work for whose accomplishment the
association was founded. This condition was fulfilled, on
many occasions and for considerable stretches of time, in
the history of Christian and Buddhist monasticism. It was
not fulfilled in the case of many of the political and religious
communities founded in America during the nineteenth
century. The experiment of New Harmony, for example,
was foredoomed to failure, because the founder of the
community, Robert Owen, made no attempt to exclude
unsuitable collaborators. New Harmony was colonized
by people of the most diverse opinions, a large proportion
of whom were either failures, cranks or swindlers. Its
life was consequently short and squalid; its conclusion
ignominious. John Humphrey Noyes, on the other hand,
I 129

ENDS AND MEANS

was always careful to admit into his fold only those who
had successfully undergone a long period of probation.
That was one of the reasons why the Oneida Community
prospered, materially and spiritually.

The next essential is that such associations should be
founded for the pursuit of noble ends and in the name of
a high ideal. The fact that a community demands con¬
siderable sacrifices from its members, imposes a strict
discipline and exacts unremitting effort is not a disadvantage.
On the contrary, if the goal is felt to be worth achieving,
men and women are glad to make sacrifices. The Trappist
rule attracted the greatest number of postulants at the time
when, under the abbacy of Dom Augustine de Lestrange,
its observances had been made unprecedentedly strict.
For those who accepted the Christian cosmology, the
practice of such austerities as were imposed by the Trappist
Rule was logical enough. For those with a different
conception of ultimate reality, it would make no sense
whatever. La Trappe is not cited here as an example to
be imitated, but merely to show that even unnecessary and
supererogatory hardships may be cheerfully accepted for
God’s sake. And not for God’s sake only. In the con¬
temporary world every political cause, from Communism
to Nazism, has attracted its army of devotees — men and
women who were ready to accept poverty and discomfort,
incessant labour and the risk of imprisonment and some¬
times even death. By those who are convinced that their
cause is good, suffering is not feared and avoided; it is
even welcomed.

All over the world and at all times associations of
devoted individuals have exhibited one common charac¬
teristic: property has been held in common and all
members have been vowed to personal poverty. In some
communities, Hindu, Buddhist and Christian, it has been
the custom for members to beg their bread. Others have

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INDIVIDUAL WORK FOR REFORM
preferred to work for their living. Associations of devoted
individuals command attention and admiration ; and where
the devoted individuals are attached to the cause of the
locally accepted religion, admiration is tinged with super¬
stitious awe. People give expression to their feelings of
admiration and awe by making gifts of property and
money. Most religious communities have begun poor and
have ended with large endowments. Great wealth is
incompatible with non-attachment and this is true, not
only of individuals, but also (though the process of cor¬
ruption is less rapid) of communities. Nothing fails like
success. Successful religious orders have always tended
to sink into complacency, bogged in the morass of their
endowments. Luckily, however, there have always been
adventurous spirits ready and able to start afresh with
great enthusiasm and little money. In due course, they
too achieve success, and the movement for reform has to
start all over again.

All effective communities are founded upon the principle
of unlimited liability. In small groups composed of
members personally acquainted with one another, un¬
limited liability provides a liberal education in responsibility,
loyalty and consideration. It was upon the principle of
unlimited liability that Raiffeisen based his system of
co-operative agricultural banking, a system which worked
successfully even among a population so illiterate, so
desperately poverty-stricken as that of the barren Wester-
wald district of Prussia in the later forties of last century.

Summed up in a couple of sentences, the economic
conditions of effective community living would seem to
be as follows. Groups must accept the principle of un¬
limited liability. Individual members should possess
nothing and everything — nothing as individuals, every¬
thing as joint owners of communally held property and
communally produced income. Property and income

I3I

ENDS AND MEANS

should not be so large as to become ends in themselves,
nor so small that the entire energies of the community
have to be directed to procuring to-morrow’s dinner.

We come next to the problem of discipline. History
shows that it is possible for associations of devoted indi¬
viduals to survive under disciplinary systems as radically
different from one another as those, respectively, of the
Society of Jesus and of the Society of Friends. Loyola
was a soldier, and the order he founded was organized on
military principles. His famous letter on obedience is
written in the spirit of what may be called the Higher
Militarism. The General of the order is clothed not
merely with the powers of a commander-in-chief in time
of war; he is also to be regarded by his inferiors as one
who stands in the place of God, and must be obeyed as
such without reference to his personal qualities as a human
being. ‘Theirs not to reason why; theirs but to do and
die.’ This doctrine so dear to the ordinary mundane
militarist, is reaffirmed by Loyola in the theological
language of the Higher Militarism. ‘The sacrifice of the
Intellect’ is the third and highest grade of obedience,
particularly pleasing to God. The inferior must not only
submit his will to that of the superior ; he must also submit
his intellect and judgment, must think the superior’s
thoughts and not his own.

Between the Higher Militarism of Loyola and the
complete democracy of a Quaker committee, in which
resolutions are not even put to the vote but discussed
until at last there emerges a general ‘sense of the meeting,’
lies the constitutional monarchy of Benedictine monasticism.
Gregory the Great characterized the Benedictine rule as
‘conspicuous for its discretion.’ He was right. Discretion
is the outstanding characteristic of almost every one of
St. Benedict’s seventy chapters. The monk’s time is
discreetly divided between practical work and devotion,

132

INDIVIDUAL WORK FOR REFORM

he is discreetly clothed and discreetly fed — not
too well, but also not too ill. Life in the monastery
is ascetic, but discreetly so. Discretion is no less con¬
spicuous in the chapters dealing with the functions of the
abbot. The abbot is king of the monastery and in the
last resort his authority is absolute. But before giving
an order it is his duty, if the question at issue is an im¬
portant one, to consult the whole community and hear
what even its humblest member has to say. In matters
of less moment, he is to confer with a cabinet of the older
monks. Furthermore, his authority is not personal. He
reigns; but his reign is a reign of law. His monks are
subject to the Rule and to him only in so far as he represents
and applies the Rule.

Communities governed on Jesuit principles, com¬
munities governed on Benedictine principles, communities
governed on Quaker principles — all three types, as history
has demonstrated, are capable of surviving. Our choice
between the various types will be determined partly by
the nature of the tasks to be performed, but mainly by the
nature of our conception of what human individuals and
societies ought to be. Certain tasks demand a technical
and therefore highly centralized direction. But even in
these cases technical centralization is generally compatible,
as we have seen, with self-government in execution.
Loyola’s choice of the Higher Militarism was dictated
partly by his own experience as a soldier and partly by
the fact that, during his day, the Church was at war, both
spiritually and physically, with Protestantism. To fight
this war, an army was needed. Loyola set out to recruit
and train that army. In modern times the conception of
sect-war has given place to that of class-war. Hence the
essentially military organization of the Fascist and Com¬
munist parties, bodies in certain respects curiously similar
to the Ignatian order. Neither Fascists nor Communists

133

ENDS AND MEANS

accept as valid the old ideal of the non-attached individual.
In the light of their philosophies of life, they are doubtless
quite right in organizing themselves as they do. But
Loyola accepted the ideal of non-attachment. In the light
of his philosophy, he was unquestionably wrong in his
adoption of the Higher Militarism. Non-attachment is
valueless unless it is the non-attachment of a fully respon¬
sible individual. A corpse is not malignant or ambitious
or lustful; but it is not for that reason a practiser of non¬
attachment. The Jesuit postulant is bidden in so many
words to model his behaviour on that of a corpse. He is
to allow himself to be moved and directed by his superior
as though he were a cadaver or a walking-stick. Such
passive obedience is incompatible with genuine non¬
attachment. If we believe in the value of non-attachment,
we must avoid the Higher Militarism and devise some
system of organization that shall be, not only efficient, but
in the widest sense of the word educative. The con¬
stitutional monarchy of Benedictinism is more educative
than Loyola’s totalitarianism. Where the members of the
community have already achieved a certain measure of
responsibility, Quaker democracy is probably better than
Benedictinism.

At all times and in all places communities have been
formed for the purpose of making it possible for their
members to live more nearly in accord with the currently
accepted religious ideals than could be done ‘in the world.’
Such communities have always devoted a considerable
proportion of their time and energy to study, to the
performance of ceremonial acts of devotion and, in some
cases at any rate, to the practice of ‘spiritual exercises.’
The nature and purpose of ‘spiritual exercises* will be
discussed at length in the chapter on ‘Religious Practices.’
All that need be said here is that the best spiritual exercises
provide a method by which the will may be strengthened

134

INDIVIDUAL WORK FOR REFORM
and directed, and the consciousness heightened and en¬
larged. The Benedictine Rule prescribed no systematic
course of spiritual exercises. Loyola’s exercises were
extremely effective in strengthening and directing the will,
but tended to prevent the consciousness from rising to the
highest level of mystical contemplation. The Quakers
had stumbled upon a method which, when properly used,
not only strengthened the will, but also heightened con¬
sciousness. Unfortunately, it often happened that the
method was not used properly. Individual Christian
mystics, like St. John of the Cross and the author of
The Cloud of Unknowing , have fully understood the psycho¬
logical nature and the spiritual and educational value of
the right kind of spiritual exercises. A similar under¬
standing is to be found in the East, where Hindu and
Buddhist communities make systematic use of spiritual
exercises as a means to spiritual insight into ultimate
reality and for the purpose of purifying, directing and
strengthening the will.

Many communities have been content to seek salvation
only for their own members and have considered that they
did enough for the ‘world’ by praying for it and providing
it with the example of piety and purposeful living. Most
Hindu and many Buddhist communities belong to this
type. In some countries, however, Buddhist monks con¬
ceive it their duty to teach, and schools, both for children
and adults, are attached to the monasteries. In the West
the majority of Christian communities have always regarded
the performance of some kind of practical work as an
indispensable part of their functions. Under the Benedictine
Rule, monks were expected to spend about three hours at
their devotions and about seven at work. Cluny gave
more time to devotion and less to work. But the Cistercian
reform was a return to the letter of the Benedictine Rule.
Much has been written on the civilizing influence of the

135

ENDS AND MEANS

monasteries in their practical, non-religious capacity. The
early Benedictines revived agricultural life after the collapse
of the Roman Empire — re-colonized the land that had been
deserted, re-introduced industrial techniques in places where
they had been almost lost. Seven hundred years later, the
Cistercians were responsible for another great agricultural
revival. Under their influence, swamps were drained and
brought under the plough ; the breeds of horses and cattle
were greatly improved. In England they devoted them¬
selves especially to sheep and were responsible for that
great trade in wool which was one of the main sources of
English prosperity during the Middle Ages. For many
centuries education and the dissemination of knowledge
through written books was mainly in the hands of the
Benedictines. Poor relief and medical aid were also sup¬
plied by the monasteries, and in most countries, almost up
to the present day, there were no nurses except those who
had been trained in a community of nuns. During the
last two centuries most of the non-religious work per¬
formed by the religious communities has come to be done
either by the state or by secular organizations in the way
of ordinary business. Up till that time, however, neither
the central authority nor the private business man was
willing or able to undertake these jobs. We may risk a
generalization and say that at any given moment of history
it is the function of associations of devoted individuals
to undertake tasks which clear-sighted people perceive
to be necessary, but which nobody else is willing to
perform.

In the light of this brief account of the salient charac¬
teristics of past communities we can see what future
communities ought to be and do. We see that they
should be composed of carefully selected individuals,
united in a common belief and by fidelity to a shared
ideal. We see that property and income should be held

INDIVIDUAL WORK FOR REFORM
in common and that every member should assume un¬
limited liability for all other members. We see that
disciplinary arrangements may be of various kinds, but
that the most educative form of organization is the demo¬
cratic. We see that it is advisable for communities to
undertake practical work in addition to study, devotion
and spiritual exercises, and that this practical work should
be of a kind which other social agencies, public or private,
are either unable or unwilling to perform.

Religious and philosophical beliefs and the methods by
which the will can be trained and the mind enlightened
will be dealt with in later chapters. Here I am concerned
with the question of practical, mundane work.

All of us desire a better state of society. But society
cannot become better before two great tasks are performed.
Unless peace can be firmly established and the prevailing
obsession with money and power profoundly modified,
there is no hope of any desirable change being made.
Governments are not willing to undertake these tasks;
indeed, in many countries they actively persecute those
who even express the opinion that such tasks are worth
performing. Private individuals are not prepared to under¬
take them in the ordinary way of business. If the work
is to be done at all — and it is clear that, unless it is done,
the state of the world is likely to become progressively
worse — it must be done by associations of devoted indi¬
viduals. To tend the sick, to relieve the poor, to teach
without charge — these are all intrinsically excellent tasks.
But for associations of devoted individuals to perform such
tasks is now a work of supererogation and, in a certain
sense, an anachronism. It was right that they should
undertake them when nobody else was prepared to do so.
If they undertake them now, when such tasks are being
performed, very efficiently, by other agencies, they are
wasting the energy of their devotion. They should use

137

ENDS AND MEANS

this energy to do what nobody else will do, to break the
new ground that nobody else will break.

The function of the well-intentioned individual, acting
in isolation, is to formulate or disseminate theoretical
truths. The function of well-intentioned individuals in
association is to live in accordance with those truths, to
demonstrate what happens when theory is translated into
practice, to create small-scale working models of the better
form of society to which the speculative idealist looks
forward. Let us consider the sort of things that would
have to be done by associations of individuals devoted to
the tasks of establishing peace and a new form of economic
and social organization, in which the present obsession
with money and power should not be given the opportunity
of coming into existence. The two tasks are, of course,
closely related. Both capitalism and nationalism are fruits
of the obsession with power, success, position. Economic
competition and social domination are fundamentally mili¬
taristic. Within a society the various classes have their
private imperialisms, just as the society as a whole has
its own, essentially similar, public imperialism. And so
on. Any association which tried to create a working
model of a society unobsessed by the lust for power and
success would at the same time be creating a working
model of a society living in peace and having no reasons
for going to war. For the sake of convenience, I shall
deal separately with the pacifistic and economic activities
of our hypothetical association. In reality, however, the
two classes of activity are closely related and comple¬
mentary.

‘All men desire peace, but very few desire those things
that make for peace.’ The thing that makes for peace
above all others is the systematic practice in all human
relationships of non-violence. For full and recent dis¬
cussions of the subject the reader is referred to Richard

138

INDIVIDUAL WORK FOR' REFORM
Gregg’s book, The Power of Non-Violence , and to works
by Barthelemy de Ligt, notably Pour Vaincre sans Violence
and La Paix Criatrice. In the paragraphs that follow I
have tried to give a brief, but tolerably complete summary
of the argument in favour of non-violence.

The inefficiency of violence has been discussed in an
earlier chapter; but the subject is such an important one
that I make no apology for repeating the substance of what
was said in that place.

If violence is answered by violence, the result is a
physical struggle. Now, a physical struggle inevitably
arouses in the minds of those directly and even indirectly
concerned in it emotions of hatred, fear, rage and resent¬
ment. In the heat of conflict all scruples are thrown to
the winds, all the habits of forbearance and humaneness,
slowly and laboriously formed during generations of
civilized living, are forgotten. Nothing matters any more
except victory. And when at last victory comes to one
or other of the parties, this final outcome of physical
struggle bears no necessary relation to the rights and
wrongs of the case; nor, in most cases, does it provide
any lasting settlement to the dispute.

The cases in which victory in war provides a more or
less lasting settlement may be classified as follows: (i)
Victory results in a final settlement when the vanquished
are completely or very nearly exterminated. This happened
to the Red Men in North America and to the Protestant
heretics in sixteenth-century Spain. That ‘the blood of
the martyrs is the seed of the church’ is true only when
a good many people survive martyrdom. If the number
of martyrs is equal to the total number of the faithful (as
it was in the case of the Japanese Christians during the
seventeenth century), then no church will spring from
their blood and the dispute between orthodox and heretic
will have been settled once and for all. Modem wars are

139

ENDS AND MEANS

generally waged between densely populated countries. In
such cases extermination is unlikely. One war tends
therefore to beget another. (2) Where the fighting forces
are so small that the mass of the rival populations is left
physically unharmed and psychologically unembittered by
the conflict, the victory of one or other army may result
in a permanent settlement. To-day entire populations are
liable to be involved in their country’s battles. The
relatively harmless wars waged according to an elaborate
code of rules by small professional armies are things of
the past. (3) Victory may lead to a permanent peace,
where the victors settle down among the vanquished as a
ruling minority and are, in due course, absorbed by them.
This does not apply to contemporary wars.

(4) Finally, victory may be followed by an act of
reparation on the part of the victors. Reparation will
disarm the resentment of the vanquished and lead to a
permanent settlement. This was the policy pursued by
the English after the Boer War. Such a policy is essentially
an application of the principles of non-violence. The
longer and more savage the conflict, the more difficult is it
to make an act of reparation after victory. It was relatively
easy for Campbell-Bannerman to be just after the Boer
War; for the makers of the Versailles Treaty, magnanimity
was psychologically all but impossible. In view of this
obvious fact, common sense demands that the principles
of non-violence should be applied, not after a war, when
their application is supremely difficult, but before physical
conflict has broken out and as a substitute for such a
conflict. Non-violence is the practical consequence that
follows from belief in the fundamental unity of all being.
But, quite apart from the validity of its philosophical
basis (which I shall discuss in a later chapter), non-violence
can prove its value pragmatically — by working. That it
can work in private life we have all had occasion to observe

140

INDIVIDUAL WORK FOR REFORM
and experience. We have all seen how anger feeds upon
answering anger, but is disarmed by gentleness and patience.
We have all known what it is to have our meannesses
shamed by somebody else’s magnanimity into an equal
magnanimity; what it is to have our dislikes melted away
by an act of considerateness ; what it is to have our cold¬
nesses and harshnesses transformed into solicitude by the
example of another’s unselfishness. The use of violence is
accompanied by anger, hatred and fear, or by exultant
malice and conscious cruelty. Those who would use non¬
violence must practise self-control, must learn moral as
well as physical courage, must pit against anger and malice
a steady good will and a patient determination to under¬
stand and to sympathize. Violence makes men worse;
non-violence makes them better. In the casual relations of
social life the principles of non-violence are systematized,
crudely, no doubt, and imperfectly, by the code of good
manners. The precepts of religion and morality represent
the systematization of the same principles in regard to
personal relations more complex and more passionate than
those of the drawing-room and the street.

Men of exceptional moral force and even ordinary
people, when strengthened by intense conviction, have
demonstrated over and over again in the course of history
the power of non-violence to overcome evil, to turn
aside anger and hatred. The hagiographies of every
religion are full of accounts of such exploits, and similar
stories can be found in the records of modem missionaries
and colonial administrators, of passive resisters and con¬
scientious objectors. Such sporadic manifestations of non¬
violence might be put down as exceptional and of no
historical importance. To those who raise such an objection
we would point out that, in the course of the last century
and a half, the principles of non-violence have been applied,
ever more systematically and with a growing realization

141

ENDS AND MEANS

of their practical value, to the solution of social and medical
problems regarded before that time as completely insoluble.
It was only in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that
it began to be realized that such problems — the problem
of the insane, the problem of the criminal, the problem of
the ‘savage* — were insoluble only because violence had
made them so. Thus, the cruel treatment of the insane
resulted in their disease being aggravated and becoming
incurable. It was not until 1792 that Pinel struck the
chains from the unhappy inmates of the Salpetriere. In
1815 a committee of the House of Commons investigated
the state of Bethlehem Hospital and found it appalling.
Bedlam was a place of filth and squalor, with dungeons,
chains and torture chambers. As late as 1840 the great
majority of asylums in Western Europe were still prisons
and their inmates were still being treated as though they
were criminals. Towards the middle of the century a
considerable effort at reform was made and, since then,
doctors have come to rely in their treatment more and
more upon kindness and intelligent sympathy, less and less
upon harshness and constraint. For a full and very vivid
account of life in a well-run modern hospital for the
insane, W. B. Seabrook’s Asylum may be recommended.
Compare this testimony with the description of life in the
Salpetriere before Pinel’s day or in unreformed Bedlam.
The difference is the difference between organized violence
and organized non-violence.

The story of prison reform is essentially similar to that
of the reform of asylums. When John Howard began his
investigations in the middle of the seventies of the
eighteenth century the only decent prisons in Europe were
those of Amsterdam. (Significantly enough, there was
much less crime in Holland than in other countries.)
Prisons were houses of torture in which the innocent
were demoralized and the criminal became more criminal.

142

INDIVIDUAL WORK FOR REFORM
In spite of Howard, no serious attempts were made even
in England to reform the monstrous system until well
into the nineteenth century. Thanks to the labours of
Elizabeth Fry and the Prison Discipline Society (yet
another example of the good work that can be done by
associations of devoted individuals), the English Parliament
was at last induced to pass two Acts in 1823 and 1824,
Acts which enunciated the principle of a new and better
system. It is unnecessary to describe the further course
of reform. Suffice it to say that in all democratic countries,
at least, the movement has been in the direction of greater
humaneness. There has been general agreement among
all those best qualified to speak that if criminals are to be
reformed or even prevented from becoming worse, organ¬
ized violence must give place to organized and intelligent
non-violence. This humanitarian movement has always
been opposed by those who say that ‘criminals should not
be pampered.’ The motives of such opposition always
turn out upon investigation to be thoroughly discreditable.
People need scapegoats on whom to load their own offences
and in comparison to whom they may seem to themselves
entirely virtuous ; furthermore, they derive a certain pleasure
from the thought of the suffering of others. Still, in spite
of much concealed sadism and much openly displayed self-
righteousness, the humanitarian movement has gone steadily
forward. Only in the dictatorial countries has it received a
check. Here, the idea of reformation has been abandoned and
the old notion of retaliatory punishment has been revived.
This is a significant symptom of that regression from charity
which is characteristic of so much contemporary activity.

Like the alienist and the gaoler, the colonial ad¬
ministrator and the anthropologist have discovered that
organized and intelligent non-violence is the best, the
most practical policy. For some time the Dutch and
the English, like the Romans before them, have known

*43

ENDS AND MEANS

that it was wise, wherever possible, to ‘leave the natives
alone/ During the last thirty years professional anthro¬
pologists have left the libraries in which their older
colleagues fitted together their mosaics of travellers’ tales
and missionary gossip, and have actually taken to living
with the objects of their study. In order to be able to do
this with safety, they have found it essential to apply the
principles of non-violence with a truly Tolstoyan thorough¬
ness. In consequence, they have won the friendship of
their ‘savages’ and have learned incomparably more about
their ways of thinking and feeling than had ever been
discovered before. During recent years, the administration
of the Belgian, Dutch, English and French colonies has
become on the whole more humane and, at the same time,
more efficient. This double improvement is mainly due
to the anthropologists, with their doctrine of intelligent
and sympathetic non-violence. The hideous methods
employed in the conquest of Abyssinia are unhappily
symptomatic of the new, worse spirit that is now abroad.

So much for the power of non-violence in the relations
of individuals with individuals. We have now to consider
mass movements in which the principles of non-violence
are applied to the relations between large groups or entire
populations and their governments. Before citing examples
of these it will be as well to reconsider briefly a matter
already touched upon in an earlier chapter, namely, the
results which follow attempts to carry through intrinsically
desirable social changes by violent methods. History
seems to demonstrate very clearly that, when revolution
is accompanied by more than a very little violence, it
achieves , not the desirable results anticipated by its makers,

but some or all of the thoroughly undesirable results that
flow from the use of violence. During the French
Revolution, for example, the transfer of power to the
Third Estate was accomplished by the regularly elected

144

INDIVIDUAL WORK FOR REFORM
National Assembly. The Terror was the fruit of sordid
quarrels for power among the revolutionaries themselves
and its results were the extinction of the republic and the
rise, first, of the Directory, then of Napoleon’s military
dictatorship. Under Napoleon a revolutionary fervour
that found its natural expression in acts of violence was
easily transformed into military fervour. French im¬
perialism resulted in the intensification of nationalistic
feelings throughout Europe, in the almost universal im¬
position of military slavery, or conscription, and in the
systematization of economic rivalry between national
groups. It would be interesting to construct a historical
‘Uchronia’ (to use Renouvier’s useful word), based upon
the postulate that Robespierre and the other Jacobin
leaders were convinced pacifists. The ‘non-Euclidean’
history deducible from this first principle would be a
history, I suspect, innocent of Napoleon, of Bismarck, of
British imperialism and the scramble for Africa, of the
World War, of militant Communism and Fascism, of
Hitler and universal rearmament. What follows is a
Uchronian account of very recent history as it might
have been if the Spanish Republic had been pacifist. ‘Even
though we know well that pacifism was as impossible to
the working-class psychology of 1931 Spain as to that of
the United States in 1917, it is important to point out
that, if the Spanish Republic had actually been pacifist in
theory and practice, the present counter-revolution could
never have arisen. A pacifist republic would, of course,
have immediately liberated the conquered Moors and
transformed them into friends; it would have dismissed
the old regime generals and returned their armies to civi]
life. It would have done away with the fears of Church
and peasants by requiring from Communists and Anarcho-
Syndicalists the renunciation of violence during the period
of the Popular Front/ (From What about Spain? by
k 145

ENDS AND MEANS

Jessie Wallace Hughan, Ph.D., War Resisters League,
New York.)

Returning from Uchronic speculations to a considera¬
tion of actuality, we find that in Russia the original aim of
the revolutionaries was the creation of a society enjoying
the maximum possible amount of self-government in every
field of activity. Unfortunately, the rulers of the country
have persisted in making use of the violent methods
inherited from the old Tsarist regime. With what results?
Russia is now a highly centralized military arid economic
dictatorship. Its government is oligarchical and makes
use of secret police methods, conscription, press censor¬
ship, and intensive propaganda or bourrage de crane , for
the purpose of keeping the people in unquestioning
subjection.

By way of contrast, let us now consider a few examples
of non-violent revolution. Of these, the movements best
known to English-speaking readers are those organized by
Gandhi in South Africa and later in India. The South
African movement may be described as completely suc¬
cessful. The discriminatory legislation against the Hindus
was repealed in 1914, entirely as the result of non-violent
resistance and non-co-operation on the part of the Indian
population. In India several important successes were
recorded, and it was shown that very large groups of men
and women could be trained to respond to the most brutal
treatment with a quiet courage and equanimity that pro¬
foundly impressed their persecutors, the spectators in the
immediate vicinity and, through the press, the public
opinion of the entire world. The task of effectively training
very lar^e numbers in a very short time tjroved^ however ^

too great and, rather than see his movement degenerate
into civil war (in which the British, being better armed,
would inevitably have won a complete victory), Gandhi
suspended the activities of his non-violent army,

146

INDIVIDUAL WORK FOR REFORM

Among other non-violent movements crowned by partial
or complete success we may mention the following. From
1901 to 1905 the Finns conducted a campaign of non-violent
resistance to Russian oppression; this was completely
successful and in 1905 the law imposing conscription on
the Finns was repealed. The long campaign of non¬
violent resistance and non-co-operation conducted by the
Hungarians under Deak was crowned with complete
success in 1867. (It is significant that the name of Kossuth,
the leader of the violent Hungarian revolution of 1848 was,
and still is, far better known than that of Deak. Kossuth
was an ambitious, power-loving militarist, who completely
failed to liberate his country. Dedk refused political
power and personal distinction, was unshakably a pacifist,
and without shedding blood compelled the Austrian
government to restore the Hungarian constitution. Such
is our partiality for ambition and militarism that we all
remember Kossuth, in spite of the complete failure of his
policy, while few of us have ever heard of Dedk, in spite
of the fact that he was completely successful.) In Germany
two campaigns of non-violent resistance were successfully
carried out against Bismarck — the Kulturkampf by the
Catholics, and the working-class campaign, after 1871, for the
recognition of the Social-Democratic Party. More recently
non-violent resistance and non-co-operation were success¬
fully used in modem Egypt against British domination.

A special form of non-co-operation is the boycott,
which has been used effectively on a number of occasions.
For example, it was employed by the Persians to break
the hated tobacco monopoly. The Chinese employed it
against British goods, after the shooting of students by
British troops. It was also used in India by the followers
of Gandhi. A striking example of the way in which even
a threat of non-violent non-co-operation can avert war
was provided by the British Labour Movement in 1920.

147

ENDS AND MEANS

The Council of Action formed on August 9th of that year
warned the government that if it persisted in its scheme
of sending British troops to Poland for an attack upon
the Russians, a general strike would be called, labour
would refuse to transport munitions or men, and a com¬
plete boycott of the war would be declared. Faced by
this ultimatum, the Lloyd George government abandoned
its plans for levying war on Russia. (This episode proves
two things : first, that if enough people so desire and have
sufficient determination, they can prevent the government
of their country from going to war; second, that this
condition is fulfilled only in rare and exceptional circum¬
stances. In most cases the great majority of a country’s
inhabitants do not, when the moment comes, desire to
prevent their government from going to war. They are
swept off their feet by the flood of nationalistic sentiment
which is always released in a moment of crisis and which
a skilful government knows how to augment and direct
by means of its instruments of propaganda. Once more
we see that the machinery for stopping war is present,
but that the will to use that machinery is generally lacking.
To create and reinforce that will, first in themselves and
then in others, is the task of devoted individuals associated
for the purpose of establishing peace.)

I have given examples of the use of non-violence in the
relations of individuals with individuals and of whole
populations with governments. It is now time to consider
the use of non-violence in the relations of governments
with other governments. Examples of non-violence on
the governmental level are seldom of a very heroic kind
and the motives actuating the parties concerned are seldom
unmixed. The tradition of politics is a thoroughly dis¬
honourable tradition. The world sanctions two systems
of morality — one for private individuals, another for
national and other groups. Men who, in private life, are

148

INDIVIDUAL WORK FOR REFORM
consistently honest, humane and considerate, believe that
when they are acting as the representatives of a group
they are justified in doing things which, as individuals,
they know to be utterly disgraceful. The nation, as we
have seen, is personified in our imaginations as a being
superhuman in power and glory, sub-human in morality.
We never even expect it to behave in any but the most
discreditable way. This being so, we must not be sur¬
prised if examples of genuine non-violent behaviour be¬
tween governments are rare, except in the case of disputes
involving matters so unimportant that the sub-human
disputants don’t feel it worth their while to fight. These
can generally be settled easily enough by means of the
existing machinery of conciliation. But wherever more
important issues are at stake, national egotism is allowed
free rein and the machinery of conciliation is either not
used at all or used only reluctantly and with manifest bad
will. In recent European history it is possible to find
only one example of the completely non-violent settlement
of a major dispute between two governments. In 1814
the Treaty of Kiel provided that Norway should be handed
over to the kingdom of Sweden. Bernadotte invaded the
country; but after a fortnight, during which no serious
conflict took place, opened negotiations. The union of the
two countries was agreed upon,' being achieved, in the
words of the preamble to the Act of Union, ‘not by force
or arms, but by free conviction.’ Ninety years later the
union was dissolved. By an overwhelming majority, the
Norwegians decided to become independent. The Swedes
accepted that decision. No violence was used on either
side. The relations between the two countries have
remained cordial ever since.

This has been a long digression, but a necessary one.
Non-violence is so often regarded as impractical, or at
best a method which only exceptional men and women

1 49

ENDS AND MEANS

can use, that it is essential to show, first, that even when
used sporadically and unsystematically (as has been the
case up till now), the method actually works; and second,
that it can be used by quite ordinary people and even,
on occasion, by those morally sub-human beings, kings,
politicians, diplomats and the other representatives of
national groups, considered in their professional capacity.
(Out of business hours these morally sub-human beings
may live up to the most exacting ethical standards.)

Modern associations of devoted individuals will have as
one of their principal functions the systematic cultivation
of non-violent behaviour in all the common relationships
of life — in personal relationships, in economic relation¬
ships, in relationships of groups with other groups and
of groups with governments. The means by which com¬
munities can secure non-violent behaviour as between
their members are essentially those which must be applied
by all reformers. The social structure of the community
can be arranged in such a way that individuals shall not be
tempted to seek power, to bully, to become rapacious;
and at the same time a direct attack can be made upon the
sources of the individual will — in other words, the indi¬
vidual can be taught, and taught to teach himself, how to
repress his tendencies towards rapacity, bullying, power-
seeking and the like. Further training will be needed in
the repression not only of fear — a consummation success¬
fully achieved by military training — but also in the re¬
pression of anger and hatred. The member of our hypo¬
thetical association must be able to meet violence without
answering violence and without fear or complaint — and he
must be able to meet it in this way, not only in moments
of enthusiasm, but also when the blood is cold, when there
is no emotional support from friends and sympathizers.
Non-violent resistance to violent oppression is relatively
easy in times of great emotional excitement; but it is very

INDIVIDUAL WORK FOR REFORM
difficult at other times. It is so difficult as to be practically
impossible except for those who have undergone systematic
training for that very purpose. It takes three to four
years of training to make a good soldier. It probably
takes at least as long to make a good non-violent resister,
capable of putting his principles into practice in any
circumstances, however horrible. The question of group
training has been fully discussed by Richard Gregg in his
Power of Non-Violence, and it is therefore unnecessary for
me to repeat the discussion in this place. The psycho¬
logical techniques for affecting the sources of the individual
will — techniques developed by the devotees of every
religion — are dealt with in a later chapter.

Trained individuals would perform two main functions.
First, it would be their business to keep the life of the
association at a higher level than the life of the surrounding
society, and in this way to hold up to that society a working
model of a superior type of social organization. Second,
they would have to ‘go out into the world,’ where their
trained capacities would be useful in allaying violence once
it had broken out and in organizing non-violent resistance
to domestic oppression and the preparation for and waging
of international war.

Groups of individuals pledged to take no part in any
future war already exist ( e.g . The War Resisters* Inter¬
national, The Peace Pledge Union) ; but their organization
is too loose and their membership too large and too widely
scattered for them to be considered as associations, in the
sense in which I have been using the word above. None
the less they can and do render very important services
to the cause for which all the reformers have always fought.
They are propagandists, first of all. In private conver¬
sations, in speeches at public meetings, in pamphlets and
newspaper articles, their members preach the gospel of
non-violence, thus continuing and extending into non-

ENDS AND MEANS

sectarian fields the admirable work performed by the
Society of Friends and other purely religious organizations.
The result is that in England, in Holland, in the Scan¬
dinavian countries, in America and to some extent in
Belgium and France, the public at large is beginning to
become aware, if only dimly and still theoretically, that
there exists a morally better and more effective alternative
to revolution, to war, to violence and brutality of every
kind.

Groups of war resisters, when sufficiendy large and, in
the moment of crisis, sufficiently unanimous, can prevent
their government from going to war. This was clearly
shown in 1920, when the Council of Action compelled
Lloyd George to call off his threatened attack on the
Soviets. It is unfortunately quite clear that the official
leaders of the various left-wing parties of the world are
not likely, in the immediate future, to call for similar
passive resistance to any war which can be represented as
‘a war of defence,’ ‘a war to save democracy,’ ‘a war
against Fascism,’ even a ‘war to end war.’ This means
that, in the case of practically any war that is likely to
break out in the near future, organized labour cannot be
counted upon to work for peace. Without the aid of
organized labour, war resisters have but the smallest chance
of actually preventing their governments from waging a
war. Nevertheless they can certainly do something to
make the process morally and perhaps even physically
more difficult than it would otherwise be. Peace can be
secured and maintained only by the simultaneous adoption
in many different fields of long-term policies, carefully
designed with this end in view. Meanwhile, however,
there is one short-term policy which every individual can
adopt — the policy of war resistance.

People of ‘advanced views’ often question this con¬
clusion. The causes of war, they argue, are predominantly

15a

INDIVIDUAL WORK FOR REFORM
economic; these causes cannot be removed except by a
change in the existing economic system ; therefore a policy
of war resistance by individuals is futile.

Those who use such arguments belong to two main
classes : currency reformers and socialists.

Currency reformers, such as Major Douglas and his
followers, point to the defects in our monetary system and
affirm that, if these defects were remedied, prosperity
could be spread over the whole world and every possible
cause of war eliminated. This is surely over-optimistic.
Defects in the monetary system may intensify economic
conflicts in general. But by no means all economic con¬
flicts are conflicts between nations. Many of the bitterest
economic conflicts are between rival groups within the
same nation; but, because these rival groups feel a senti¬
ment of national solidarity, their conflicts do not result in
war. It is only when monetary systems are organized in
the interest of particular nations or groups of nations that
they become a potential cause of war. So long as national¬
ism exists, scientifically managed currencies may actually
make for war rather than peace. ‘ Once the controllers of
national monetary systems begin to apply their power
self-consciously, for the betterment of their people, we
have monetary conflicts arising on strictly national lines,
such as we see to-day in competitive depreciation and
exchange control.* (Kenneth Boulding in Economic Causes
of JPar.) The greater the conscious scientific control
exercised by national authorities, the greater the inter¬
national friction, at least until such time as all nations agree
to adopt the same methods of control. (See the relevant
passages in the chapter on ‘Planned Society.*)

The present economic system is unjust and inefficient
and it is urgently desirable, as the socialists insist, that it
should be changed. But such change would not lead
immediately and automatically to universal peace. ‘In so

M3

ENDS AND MEANS

far as the socialization of a single nation creates truly
national monopolies in the exports of that nation, so the
power of the government increases and the national
character of economic conflicts becomes intensified. Thus
the socialization of a single nation, even though the rulers
of that nation be most peaceably minded, is likely to
intensify the fears of other nations in proportion as the
control of the socialist government over its country’s
economic life is increased. . . . Unless they are supported
by a strong conscious peace sentiment, they (the socialist
regimes of individual nations) may be turned to purposes
of war just as effectively — and indeed probably more
effectively — than capitalist societies.’ {Op. cit.)

It will thus be seen that individual war resisters acting
alone or in association have a very important part to play
in the immediate future. That changes in the present
economic and monetary systems must be made is evident;
and it is also clear that, in the long run, these changes
will make for the establishment of the conditions of per¬
manent peace. But meanwhile, so long as nationalistic
sentiment persists, reforms of the economic and monetary
system may temporarily increase international ill-feeling
and the probability of war. The function of associations
of individual war resisters is to prevent, if possible, necessary
and intrinsically desirable changes in the economic and
monetary systems from resulting in international discord
and war.

In some countries the missionaries of non-violence can
still preach their gospel without interference. In most of
the world, however, they can only labour, if at all, in
secret. Men of good will have always had to combine
the virtues of the serpent with those of the dove. This
serpentine wisdom is more than ever necessary to-day,
when the official resistance to men of good will is greater
and better organized than at any previous period. Progress

M4

INDIVIDUAL WORK FOR REFORM
in technology and in the science and art of organization
has made it possible for governments to bring their police
to a pitch of efficiency undreamed of by Napoleon,
Mettemich and the other great virtuosi of secret-police
rule in previous ages. Before the Risorgimento the
Austrians governed Italy by means of gendarmes, spies and
agents provocateurs. Garibaldi fought to rid his country
of these disgusting parasites. To-day, Mussolini has a
secret police far superior to anything that the Austrians
could boast of. It is the same in contemporary Russia.
Stalin’s police is like the Tsar’s — like the Tsar’s but,
thanks to telephones, wireless, fast cars and the latest
filing systems, a good deal smarter. The same is true of
every other country. All over the world the police are
able to act with a rapidity, a precision and a foresight
never matched in the past.1 Moreover, they are equipped
with scientific weapons, such as the ordinary person cannot
procure. Against forces thus armed and organized, violence
and cunning are unavailing. The only methods by which
a people can protect itself against the tyranny of rulers
possessing a modern police force are the non-violent
methods of massive non-co-operation and civil disobedience.
Such methods are the only ones which give the people a
chance of taking advantage of its numerical superiority to
the ruling caste and to discount its manifest inferiority in
armaments. For this reason it is enormously important
that the principles of non-violence should be propagated
rapidly and over the widest possible area. For it is only
by means of well and widely organized movements of

1 Like all other instruments, the modern police force can be
used either well or ill. Police trained in non-violence could use
modem methods to forestall any outbreak of violence, to prevent
potential hostilities from developing, to foster co-operation. A
non-violent police force could be made a complete substitute for

ENDS AND MEANS

non-violence that the populations of the world can hope
to avoid that enslavement to the state which in so many
countries is already an accomplished fact and which the
threat of war and the advance of technology are in process
of accomplishing elsewhere. In the circumstances of our
age, most movements of revolutionary violence are likely
to be suppressed instantaneously; in cases where the
revolutionaries are well equipped with modem arms, the
movement will probably turn into a long and stubbornly
disputed civil war, as was the case in Spain. The chances
that any change for the better will result from such a
civil war are exceedingly small. Violence will merely
produce the ordinary results of violence and the last state
of the country will be worse than the first. This being so,
non-violence presents the only hope of salvation. But, in
order to resist the assaults of a numerous and efficient
police, or, in the case of foreign invasion, of soldiers,
non-violent movements will have to be well organized and
widely spread. The regression from humanitarianism,
characteristic of our age, will probably result in manifesta¬
tions of non-violent resistance being treated with a severity
more ruthless than that displayed by most governments in
recent times. Such severities can only be answered by
great numbers and great devotion. Confronted by huge
masses determined not to co-operate and equally determined
not to use violence, even the most ruthless dictatorship
is nonplussed. Moreover, even the most ruthless dictator¬
ship needs the support of public opinion, and no govern¬
ment which massacres or imprisons large numbers of
systematically non-violent individuals can hope to retain
such support. Once dictatorial rule has been established,
the task of organizing non-violent resistance to tyranny
or war becomes exceedingly difficult. The hope of the
world lies in those countries where it is still possible for
individuals to associate freely, express their opinions with-

156

INDIVIDUAL WORK FOR REFORM
out constraint and, in general, have their being at least in
partial independence of the state.

A more efficient police force is not the only obstacle
which technological progress has put in the way of desirable
change. I have said that even the most ruthless dictatorship
needs the support of public opinion; unhappily, modem
technology has put into the hands of the ruling minorities
new instruments for influencing public opinion incom¬
parably more efficient than anything possessed by the
tyrants of the past. The press and the radio are already
with us, and within a few years television will doubdess
be perfected. Seeing is believing to an even greater
extent than hearing; and a government which is able to
fill every home with subtly propagandist pictures as well
as speech and print, will probably be able, within wide
limits, to manufacture whatever kind of public opinion it
. needs. Missionaries for our hypothetical associations are
likely to find in this synthetic public opinion an enemy
even more difficult to overcome or circumvent than the
secret police. Part of their work will have to be a work
of education — the building up in individual minds of
intellectual and emotional resistance to suggestion. (See
the relevant passages in the chapter on ‘ Education.*)

So much for the first task of our associations — the
establishment of peace through the doing and teaching of
those things which make for peace. Their other task is
to cure themselves and the world of the prevailing obsession
with money and power. Once more, direct approach to
the sources of the individual will must be combined with
the ‘preventive ethics’ of a social arrangement that protects
from the temptations of avarice and ambition. What
should be the nature of this social arrangement? It will
be best to begin with a consideration of what it should
not be. Most of those who in recent years have actually
founded associations of devoted individuals have not even

157

ENDS AND MEANS

attempted to solve the economic problems of our time:
they have simply run away from them. Appalled by the
complexities of life in an age of technological advance,
they have tried to go backwards. Their communities have
been little Red Indian Reservations of economic primitives,
fenced away from the vulgar world of affairs. But the
problem of modern industry and finance cannot possibly be
solved by setting up irrelevant little associations of handi¬
craftsmen and amateur peasants, incapable in most cases
of earning their livelihood and dependent for their bread
and butter upon income derived from the hated world of
machines. We cannot get rid of machinery, for the simple
reason that, in the process of getting rid of it, we should
be forced to get rid of that moiety of the human race whose
existence on this planet is made possible only by the'
existence of machines. The machine age in Erewhon had
evidently led to no startling increase of population; hence
the relative ease with which the Erewhonians were able to
return to the horse and handicraft civilization. In the
real world, machinery has resulted in the trebling of the
population of the industrial countries within a century and
a half. A return to horses and handicrafts means a return,
through starvation, revolution, massacre and disease, to
the old level of population. Obviously, then, such a
return is outside the sphere of practical politics. Those
who preach such a return and, in their communities of
devoted individuals, actually practise it, are merely shirking
the real issues. Machine production cannot be abolished;
it is here to stay. The question is whether it is to stay
as an instrument of slavery or as a way to freedom. A
similar question arises in regard to the wealth created by
machine production. Is this wealth to be distributed in
such a way as to secure the maximum of social injustice,
or the minimum? Governments and private companies
in the ordinary way of business are not specially concerned

I58

INDIVIDUAL WORK FOR REFORM
to discover the proper solutions of these problems. The
task, therefore, devolves upon associations of devoted
individuals.

We see then, that if such associations are to be useful
in the modem world, they must go into business — and go
into business in the most scientific, the most unprimitive
way possible.

Now, in order to engage in any advanced form of
industrial or agricultural production, considerable quantities
of capital are required. The fact is unfortunate; but in
existing circumstances it cannot be otherwise. Good
intentions and personal devotion are not enough to save
the world; if they were, the world would have been
saved long before this — for the supply of saints has never
failed. But the good are sometimes stupid and very often
ill-informed. Few saints have also been scientists or
organizers. Conversely, few scientists and organizers have
been saints. If the world is to be saved, scientific methods
must be combined with good intentions and devotion.
By themselves, neither goodness nor intelligence are equal
to the task of changing society and individuals for the better.

Where modern industrial and agricultural production
are concerned, scientific method cannot be applied in vacuo.
It must be applied to machines, to workmen, to an office
organization. But machines must be bought and supplied
with their motive power, workmen and administrators
must be paid. Hence the need of capital. In the circum¬
stances of modern life, associations of devoted individuals
cannot do much good unless they command the means to
make a considerable investment.

Having made its investment and embarked upon pro¬
duction, the association will have to work out, by practical
experiment, the most satisfactory solutions of such problems
as the following: —

To find the best way of combining workers' self-

159

ENDS AND MEANS

government with technical efficiency — responsible freedom
at the periphery with advanced scientific management at
the centre.

To find the best way of varying the individual’s labours
so as to eliminate boredom and multiply educative contacts
with other individuals, working in responsible self-
governing groups.

To find the best way of disposing of the wealth created
by machine production. (Some form of communal owner¬
ship of property and income seems, as we have seen, to
be a necessary condition of successful living in an association
of devoted individuals.)

To find the best way of investing superfluous wealth
and to determine the proportion of such wealth that ought
to be invested in capital goods.

To find the best way of using the gifts of individual
workers and the best way of employing persons belonging
to the various psychological types. (See the chapter on
‘Inequality.’)

To find the best form of community life and the best
way of using leisure.

To find the best form of education for children and of
self-education for adults. (See the chapters on ‘Education’
and ‘ Religious Practices.’)

To find the best form of communal government and the
best way to use gifts of leadership without subjecting the
individuals so gifted to the temptation of ambition or
arousing in their minds the lust for power. (See the
chapter on ‘Inequality.’)

Devoted and intelligent individuals living in association
and working systematically along such lines as these should
be able quite quickly to build up a working model of a
more satisfactory type of society.

Chapter XI
INEQUALITY

THE world which a poor man inhabits is not the same
as the world a rich man inhabits. If there is to be
intelligent co-operation between all members of a society,
there must be agreement as to the things upon which they
are to work together. People who are forced by economic
inequality to inhabit dissimilar universes will be unable to
co-operate intelligently.

To obtain complete equality of income for all is probably
impossible and perhaps even undesirable. But certain steps
in the direction of equalization can and undoubtedly ought
to be taken.

Even in capitalist countries the principle not only of the
minimum but also of the maximum wage has already been
admitted. Within the last thirty years it has generally been
agreed that there are limits beyond which incomes and
personal accumulations of capital ought not to go. In such
countries as England, France and, more recently, the United
States, fortunes are diminished at every death by anything
from a tenth to three-quarters. Between deaths, die tax
collector regularly takes away from the rich anything
from a quarter to three-fifths of their incomes. Now
that the principle of the limitation of wealth has
been implicitly accepted, even by the wealthy, there
should be no great difficulty in imposing an absolute
maximum.

At what figure should the maximum wage be fixed? A
judge of the London Bankruptcy Court, retiring after half
a lifetime of service, made an interesting statement recently
L 161

ENDS AND MEANS

on the relation between income and happiness. He had
observed, he said, that increase of income tended to result
in increase of personal satisfaction up to a limit of about
£5000 a year. After that figure, satisfaction seemed gener¬
ally to decline. (Non-attachment, we might add, becomes
difficult or impossible for most people at a point consider¬
ably below this figure. ‘It is harder for a rich man . . .’
The possession of considerable wealth causes men to
identify themselves with what is less than self — does so
as effectively as the possession of means so small that the
individual suffers hunger and continual anxiety. Extreme
poverty can also be a needle’s eye.)

The problem of the maximum wage can also be ap¬
proached from another angle. The question may be posed
in this way: in existing circumstances, how much does an
individual require in order to live in the highest state of
physical and intellectual efficiency, of which his organism
js capable? It has been calculated that, if he is to be
properly nourished, housed and educated, if he is to have
adequate holidays, adequate medical attention and adequate
educative travel, he will need an income of about £600 or
£ 700 a year, or its equivalent in cash or communally pro¬
vided services. Where several people are living together
in a family group, this sum can doubtless be reduced with¬
out reducing each individual’s opportunities for self¬
development. At the present time, the great majority of
human beings receive only a fraction of this optimum
income.

The degree of economic inequality is not the same in all
countries. In England, for example, inequality is greater,
even among employees of the state, than in France. The
highest government servants in England are paid forty or
fifty times as much as the lowest. In France, the head of
the department receives only about twenty times as much
as the typist. Strangely enough, the degree of economic

162

INEQUALITY

inequality would seem to be greater in Soviet Russia than
in many capitalist countries. Max Eastman cites figures
which show that, whereas the managing director of an
American mining firm receives about forty times as much
as one of his miners, the corresponding person in Russia
may be earning up to eighty times the wage of the lowest-
paid worker.

What is the degree of economic inequality that should be
allowed to exist in any community? Clearly, there can be
no universally valid answer, at any rate in existing circum¬
stances. In a society where the minimum wage is very
small, it may be necessary to fix the rate of inequality at a
higher level than in one where the majority of people are
earning something more nearly approaching the optimum
income. This may seem unjust and (since poor and rich
inhabit different worlds) inexpedient. And, in effect, it is
unjust and inexpedient. But the inexpediency of reducing
all incomes to a level far below the optimum is probably
greater than the inexpediency of keeping a few incomes at
or above the optimum level. No society can make progress
unless at least some of its members are in receipt of an
income sufficient to ensure their fullest development. This
means that, where minimum wages are low, as they are in
even the richest of contemporary communities, it may be
necessary to allow the best-paid individuals to draw an
income twenty or even thirty times as great as that of the
worst-paid. If ever it becomes possible to distribute the
optimum income to all, the inequality rate may be greatly
reduced. There is no reason, in such a society, why the
highest incomes should be more than two or three times
as great as the lowest.

The economic is not the only kind of inequality. There
is also the more formidable, the less remediable inequality
which exists between individuals of different psychological
types. ‘The fool sees not the same tree that the wise man

163

ENDS AND MEANS

sees.’ The universes of two individuals may be profoundly
dissimilar, even though they may be in receipt of equal
incomes. Pitt is to Addington as London is to Paddington.
Nature as well as nurture has set great gulfs between us.
Some of these gulfs are unbridged and seemingly unbridge¬
able; across them there is no communication. For
example, I simply cannot imagine what it feels like to be
a genius at chess, a great mathematician, a composer, who
does his thinking in terms of melodies and progressions of
harmonies. Some people are so clear-sighted that they can
see the moons of Jupiter without a telescope; in some the
sense of smell is so keen that, after a little training, they can
enumerate all the constituent elements in a perfume com¬
posed of fifteen to twenty separate substances; some people
can detect minute variations of pitch, to which the majority
of ears are deaf.

Many attempts have been made to produce a scientific
classification of human types in terms of their physical and
psychological characteristics. For example, there was the
Hippocratic classification of men according to the pre¬
dominance of one or other of the four humours; this
theory dominated European medicine for upwards of two
thousand years. Meanwhile the astrologers and palmists
were using fivefold classification in terms of planetary
types. We still speak of sanguine or mercurial tempera¬
ments, describe people as jovial, phlegmatic, melancholic,
saturnine. Aristotle wrote a treatise on physiognomy in
which he attempted a classification of individuals in terms
of the supposed characteristics of the animals they resembled.
This pseudo-zoological classification of human beings kept
cropping up in physiognomical literature until the time of
Lavater.

In recent years we have had a number of new classifica¬
tions. Stockard, in his Physical Basis of Personality , uses
a twofold classification in terms of ‘linear’ and ‘lateral’

164

INEQUALITY

types of human beings. Kretschmer uses a threefold
classification. So does Dr. William Sheldon, whose
classification in terms of somatotonic, viscerotonic and
cerebrotonic I shall use in the present chapter. It seems
probable that, with the latest work in this field, we may
be approaching a genuinely scientific description of human
types. Meanwhile, let us not forget that many of the old
systems of classification, though employing strange terms
and an erroneous explanatory hypothesis, were based firmly
upon the facts of observation and personal experience.

It is worth remarking that there have been fashions
in temperaments just as there have been fashions in clothes
and medicine, theology and the female figure. For example,
the men of the eighteenth century admired above all the
phlegmatic temperament — the temperament of the man
who is naturally cautious, thoughtful, not easily moved.
Voltaire gave place to Rousseau; admiration for a certain
sagacious coolness, to the cult of sentimentality for senti¬
mentality’s sake. Phlegm lost its old prestige and the
sanguine temperament — hot passion and wet tears — rose to
a position of fashionable pre-eminence, from which it was
driven a generation later by the Byronic temperament,
which is a mixture of sanguine and melancholy, a strange
hybrid of inconsistencies, warm and moist allied with cold
and dry. Meanwhile, at the Gothic height of the Romantic
Movement, the Philosophic Radicals were doing their best
to revive the prestige of phlegm ; and a little later it was
the choleric temperament, the temperament of the pushful,
energetic man of business, that came into fashion. With
muscular Christianity even religion becomes choleric and
(in Sheldon’s phrase) somatotonic.

In view of the fact that membership of one or other of
the psycho-physiological species is hereditary and inalien¬
able, the habit of exalting one temperament at the expense
of all the rest is manifestly silly. All the temperaments

ENDS AND MEANS

exist and something can be made of each of them. People
have a right to be phlegmatic, just as they have a right to
be plump. In our intolerant ignorance we demand that all
shall conform to a fashionable ideal and be, say, melancholy
or thin. There are times (such is our folly) when we
demand that they shall have psychological characteristics
which are to a great extent inconsistent with the physio¬
logical peculiarities that are in fashion at the moment.
Thus, until a year or two since, we insisted that women
should be simultaneously good mixers and as thin as rakes.
But the born good-mixer is a person of lateral type, plump
and well covered. Fashion in this case demanded the
conjunction of incompatibles.

All the systems of classification are agreed that no indi¬
vidual belongs exclusively to one type; to some extent all
men and women are of mixed type. But the amount of
mixing may be small or great. Where it is small, the indi¬
vidual approximates to the pure type and is separated by a
great gulf of psychological incommensurability from those
in whom the characteristics of some other type predominate.
Thus, it is all but impossible for the melancholy man to
enter the universe inhabited by the choleric. The person
who, if he went mad, would be a manic-depressive, cannot
comprehend the potential victim of schizophrenia. The
rotund and jolly ‘lateral’ type is worlds apart from the
unexpansive, inward-turning ‘linear.’ The ‘viscerotonic’
man simply can’t imagine why the ‘cerebrotonic’ shouldn’t
be a ‘good mixer,* like himself. The one ‘has a warm
heart’; his ‘reins move,’ his ‘bowels yearn.’ The other
is ‘a highbrow’ and ‘has no guts.’ (Rich treasures of
physiological psychology lie buried in the language of the
Old Testament and even in schoolboys’ slang 1)

At this point an example from my own personal experi¬
ence may not be out of place. My own nature, as it happens,
is on the whole phlegmatic, and, in consequence, I have the

t 66

INEQUALITY

greatest difficulty in entering into the experiences of those
whose emotions are easily and violently aroused. Before
such works of art as Werther , for example, or Women in
Love , or the Prophetic Books of William Blake I stand
admiring, but bewildered. I don’t know why people should
be shaken by such tempests of emotion on provocations,
to my mind, so slight. Reading through the Prophetic
Books not long ago, I noticed that certain words, such as
‘howling,’ ‘cloud,’ ‘storm,’ ‘shriek’ occurred with extra¬
ordinary frequency. My curiosity was aroused ; I made a
pencil mark in the margin every time one of these words
occurred. Adding up the score at the end of a morning’s
reading, I found that the average worked out to something
like two howls and a tempest to every page of verse. The
Prophetic Books are, of course, symbolical descriptions of
psychological states. What must have been the mentality
of a man for whom thunder, lightning, clouds and screams
seemed the most appropriate figure of speech for describing
his ordinary thoughts and feelings? For my own part, I
simply cannot imagine. I observe the facts, I record them —
but only from the outside, only as a field naturalist. What
they mean in terms of actual experience, I don’t even pretend
to know. There is a gulf here, an absence of communica¬
tion. Nevertheless, if I had known Blake, I should cer¬
tainly have found that there was a common ground between
us, that there were ways in which we could have established
satisfactory human relations. If, for example, I had behaved
towards him with courtesy and consideration, he would
almost undoubtedly have behaved towards me in the same
manner. If I had treated him honourably, the chances are
that he would have treated me honourably. If I had dis¬
played confidence in him, it is highly probable that he
would sooner or later have displayed an equal confidence
in me. The solution of the problem of natural (and, where
it exists, of acquired) inequality is moral and practical. The

167

ENDS AND MEANS

gulfs which separate human beings of unlike temperaments
and different degrees of ability do not extend over the
entire field of the personality. The inhabitants of the high¬
lands of Arizona are cut off from one another by the mile-
deep abyss of the Grand Canyon. But if they follow the
Colorado River down towards its mouth they find them¬
selves at last in the plains at a point where the stream can
be conveniently bridged. Something analogous is true in
the psychological world. Human beings may be separated
by differences of intellectual ability as wide and deep as the
Grand Canyon, may peer at one another, uncomprehend¬
ing, across great gulfs of temperamental dissimilarity. But
it is always in their power to move away from the terri¬
tories in which these divisions exist; it is always possible
for them, if they so desire, to find in the common world of
action, the site for a broad and substantial bridge connecting
even the most completely incommensurable of psycho¬
logical universes. It is the business of the large-scale
reformer so to arrange the structure of society that no
impediment shall be put in the way of bridge-building. It
is the business of educators and religious teachers to per¬
suade individual men and women that bridge-building is
desirable and to teach them at the same time how to trans¬
late mere theory and platonic good resolutions into actual
practice.

Impediments to bridge-building will be most numerous
in communities where inequalities of income (and, along
with them, inequalities of education) are very great and
where the social pattern is hierarchical and authoritarian.
They will be fewest in communities where the principle of
self-government is most widely applied, where responsible
group-life is most intense, and where inequalities of income
and education are small. Feudalism, capitalism and mili¬
tary dictatorship (whether accompanied by public owner¬
ship of the means of production or not) are almost equally

168

INEQUALITY

unfavourable to bridge-building. Under these regimes
natural inequalities are emphasized and new artificial in¬
equalities created ex nihilo. The most propitious environ¬
ment for equality is constituted by a society where the
means of production are owned co-operatively, where
power is decentralized, and where the community is
organized in a multiplicity of small, inter-related but, as
far as may be, self-governing groups of mutually responsible
men and women.

Equality in action — in other words, reciprocal good
behaviour — is the only kind of equality that possesses a
real existence. !But this equality in action cannot be fully
realized except where individuals of different types and
professions are given opportunities for associating freely
and frequently with one another. It is the job of the large-
scale reformer to arrange the social structure in such a way
that existing obstacles to free and frequent contact between
individuals shall be removed and new opportunities for
contact created. The change-over from an authoritarian to
a co-operative pattern of society would effectively get rid
of most of the arbitrary caste barriers which at present make
it so hard for individuals to come together freely. At the
same time opportunities for the making of new contacts
should be created in a variety of ways. For example, it
would be possible to extend to a wider circle the advantages
of the simultaneously academic and technical system of
education developed by Dr. A. E. Morgan at Antioch
College, Ohio. (I shall return to this example in the
chapter on Education.)

It is not only during the period of formal education that
opportunities for new contacts can be made. By arranging
for individuals to change over from one job to another, the
large-scale reformer can greatly increase the number of
personal relationships entered into during any given work¬
ing life. Such changes of job are valuable, not only because

169

ENDS AND MEANS

they bring the individual into contact with new groups of
his fellow-men and women, but also because they alleviate
the boredom induced by monotony and the sight of all-too-
familiar surroundings. (Boredom, as we have already seen,
is one of the reasons for the persistent popularity of war;
any change, whether in the structure of society or in the
structure of the individual personality, that tends to reduce
boredom, tends also to reduce the danger of war.)

I have given only two examples ; but many other methods
could doubtless be devised for multiplying valuable con¬
tacts and so transforming the life of every individual man
and woman into an education in responsibility and equal
co-operation.

There are no bridges across the Grand Canyon. Those
who live on opposite sides of the abyss must go down to
the plains in order to find a crossing-place. But between
those who live on the same side, communication is easy.
They can come and go without hindrance, can mingle
freely with their fellows. In other words, men and women
of different types can establish contact with one another
only in action, and only on condition of reciprocal good
behaviour. Men and women of the same type are psycho¬
logically commensurable. Communication between them
is, of course, facilitated by reciprocal good behaviour; but
even when the behaviour is bad, even when they dislike
and mistrust, they can understand one another. Cerebro-
tonics who have had the same sort of education can come
together on the intellectual plane. Viscerotonics will mingle
in the loud and expansive good-fellowship which all of
them enjoy. Somatotonics will appreciate each other’s
delight in muscular activity for its own sake. And there
are also the smaller sub-divisions. Mathematicians will
associate with other mathematicians. The musician speaks
a language which all other musicians understand. People
with the same kind of eccentric sexual habits meet on the

170

INEQUALITY

common ground of their particular aberration. (Thus, the
freemasonry of homosexuality brings together men of the
most diverse types, intraverted intellectuals and bargees,
emotional viscerotonic people and people of somatotonic
type, professional boxers and able-bodied seamen.) In a
word, there will always be a tendency for birds of a feather
to flock together. This is inevitable and right. What is
not right is that flocking should be exclusively between
birds of a feather. It is essential that society should be so
arranged that there are opportunities for people of different
types to co-operate. This, of course, will not prevent
people of the same type from forming groups of their own.
For it is fortunately possible for a human being to be a
member of many groups simultaneously. Thus, a man may
have a family and various sets of friends ; may be a member
of a professional association, a friendly society, a golf club,
a church, a scientific association. It is worth remarking in
this context that, so far as the concrete facts of human
experience are concerned, ‘Society’ is a meaningless abstrac¬
tion. A man has no direct experience of his relations with
‘Society’; he has experience only of his relations with
limited groups of similar or dissimilar individuals. Social
theory and practice have often gone astray, because they
have started out from such abstractions as ‘Society’ instead
of the facts of concrete experience — relationships within
groups and of groups with one another. It is a significant
historical fact that political philosophies which make great
play with such large, abstract words as ‘Society’ have
generally been philosophies intended to justify a tyranny,
either military-capitalist-feudal, like the tyranny of Hegel’s
Prussia and Hitler’s Third Reich, or military-state-socialist-
bureaucratic, like that of Russia after the death of Lenin.
If we want to realize the good ends proposed by the
prophets, we shall do well to talk less about the claims of
‘Society’ (which have always, as a matter of brute fact, been

171

ENDS AND MEANS

identified with the claims of a ruling oligarchy) and more
about the rights and duties of small co-operating groups.

Some individuals have more general intelligence than
others; some possess special abilities which others lack;
certain men and women have a temperament which unfits
them to be leaders or administrators; in others, on the
contrary, the configuration of the ‘humours’ is such that
they are admirably well adapted to take the direction of
a common enterprise. The problem is, first, to see that
round and square pegs get into the holes that fit them,
and, second, to prevent the bom leader, when he is where
his abilides entitle him to be, from exploiting his position
in undesirable ways.

In his book, A Chacun sa Chance , Hyacinthe Dubreuil
has pointed out that, where small groups are engaged on a
particular job of work for which they are jointly responsible
and for which they are rewarded, not as individuals, but as
a group, the choice of a leader and the assignment of par¬
ticular tasks to each individual seldom present any special
difficulty. Every man is a very shrewd judge of the pro¬
fessional competence of those who are in the same line of
business as himself. Every man knows what fair dealing
and consideration are, and generally knows well enough
which person, in the particular group in which he happens
at the moment to be working, is most likely to be con¬
siderate and fair as well as efficient. In most of the situa¬
tions of working life the exigencies of the job may be relied
upon to induce men and women, who are working together
in small, co-operating, responsible groups, to elect as group
leader and organizer the person who is on the whole best
fitted for the post.1 Nor is there any great danger that

1 Dubreuil’s findings are confirmed by Mr. Peter Scott, who has
had wide experience in organizing co-operative groups among the
unemployed in South Wales. Such groups, he found, always tended
to elect die best men as leaders.

172

INEQUALITY

such a group leader will be tempted or, if tempted, be able
to exploit his position to the detriment of his fellows. The
problem of what may be called small-scale leadership is not
a difficult one, except in societies of hierarchical pattern. In
such societies (and where industrial organization is con¬
cerned, even the democratic states are hierarchical and
dictatorial), the little leader is constantly tempted to revenge
himself on those below him for all the indignities he has
received from his superiors. Chickens in a poultry yard have
a well-defined ‘pecking order.’ Hen A pecks hen B, who
pecks C, who pecks D and so on. It is the same in human
societies under the present dispensation. The tyrannical jack-
in-office is to a great extent the product of tyranny in higher
places. Big dictators breed little dictators, just as surely
as big scorpions breed little scorpions, as big dung-beetles
breed little dung-beetles. A society organized, not hier¬
archically, but on co-operative lines, and in which the principle
of self-government is applied wherever possible, should be
tolerably immune from the plague of small-scale tyranny.

Bad leadership is undesirable at any social level. At the
top, it may produce, not merely local discomfort, but
general disaster. The body politic is subject to two grave
diseases in the head, madness and imbecility. When people
like Sulla or Napoleon assume the functions of the social
brain, the community which they direct succumbs to some
form of insanity. Most commonly the disease is paranoia;
all the contemporary dictatorships, for example, suffer
acutely from delusions of grandeur and of persecution.
The alternative to mad King Stork is, only too frequently,
a hopelessly inactive and deficient King Log who infects the
body politic with his own imbecility. Imbeciles rise to
power either by hereditary right or, if the system of choice
is elective, because they possess certain demagogic talents,
or very often, because it suits certain powerful interests
within the community to have an imbecile in office. Most

173

ENDS AND MEANS

modern societies have abolished the hereditary principle in
politics; idiots can no longer rule a country by right of
blood. In the world of finance and industry, however, the
hereditary principle is still admitted ; morons and drunkards
may be company directors by divine right. In the world
of politics, the chances of getting imbecile leaders under an
elective system could be considerably reduced by applying
to politicians a few of those tests for intellectual, physical
and moral fitness which we apply to the candidates for
almost every other kind of job. Imagine the outcry if
hotel-keepers were to engage servants without demanding
a ‘character’ from their previous employers; or if sea
captains were chosen from homes for inebriates; or if
railway companies entrusted their trains to locomotive
engineers with arterio-sclerosis and prostate trouble; or if
civil servants were appointed and doctors allowed to
practise without passing an examination ! And yet, where
the destinies of whole nations are at stake, we do not
hesitate to entrust the direction of affairs to men of notori¬
ously bad character ; to men sodden with alcohol ; to men
so old and infirm that they can’t do their work or even
understand what it is about; to men without ability or
even education. In practically every other sphere of
activity we have accepted the principle that nobody may
be admitted to hold responsible positions unless he
can pass an examination, show a clean bill of health and
produce satisfactory testimonials as to his moral character;
and even then the office is given , in most cases, only on the
condition that its holder shall relinquish it as soon as he
reaches the threshold of old age. By applying these rudi¬
mentary precautions to politicians, we should be able to
filter out of our public life a great deal of that self-satisfied
stupidity, that authoritative senile incompetence, that down¬
right dishonesty, which at present contaminates it.

To guard against the man of active, paranoid ambition,

174

INEQUALITY

the potential King Stork of a political or industrial society,
is more difficult than to guard against the half-wit, the
dodderer and the petty crook. Political and legal checks
to apibition, such as those contained in the American
Constitution, are effective up to a certain point, but only
up to a certain point. Legal checks and balances are merely
institutionalized mistrust; and mistrust, however elabor¬
ately and ingeniously translated into terms of law, can
never be an adequate foundation for social life. If people
do not wish to play the political or industrial game accord¬
ing to the prescribed rules, no amount of surveillance will
keep them from taking unfair advantages whenever they
offer. ‘ Over the mountains,’ runs the old song, ‘and under
the graves’: avarice and the lust for power will ‘find out
the way’ even more surely than love. They will find out
the way for just so long as people are brought up to regard
ambition as a virtue and the accumulation of money as
men’s most important business. At present, we choose to
organize our political and economic life and to educate our
children in such a way that we must inevitably suffer, as
time goes on, more and more severely and chronically
from the organized paranoia of dictatorship. But even if
reforms were carried out to-day their full effects would not
be felt until those brought up under the present dispensa¬
tion had either died or sunk into impotent old age. Mean¬
while, it may be asked, are there any changes in social
organization which would make it more difficult for the
ambitious men to impose their wills upon society?

An examination system would rid our business and our
politics of imbeciles and the more simple-minded types of
crook. It would do little to keep out the individual of
consuming ambition, and nothing at all, when he had passed
his tests, to educate him into a more desirable, less greedily
Napoleonic frame of mind. Something more is needed
than examinations. Mere social machinery cannot give

J7J

ENDS AND MEANS

us the whole of that something more: but as much of it
as social machinery can give could probably be provided
by some institution akin to that of the Chartered Account¬
ants. A self-governing union of professional men, who
have accepted certain rules, assumed certain responsibilities
for one another, and can focus the whole force of their
organized public opinion, in withering disapproval, upon
any delinquent member of the society — such an organiza¬
tion is one of the most powerfully educative social devices
ever invented. Leadership will never be made expert and
responsible until there is an institute of chartered business
managers, another of chartered politicians and yet another
of chartered administrators. (In England the higher civil
service is almost a caste, having its own rules and standards,
which it enforces by distributing that most gratifying form
of praise, that most unbearable form of blame, the praise
and blame of fellow professionals. To the fact that it
approximates so nearly to an institute of chartered adminis¬
trators it owes its efficiency and its remarkable freedom
from corruption.)

Examinations and membership of a professional order
would unquestionably do a great deal to raise the standard
of political and economic leadership and to check the
tendency of ambitious individuals to exceed due bounds.
To extend the application of an old is always easier than
to introduce a new and unfamiliar principle; and as the
examination system is almost universally in use and the
chartered professional organization widely known and
respected, there should be no great difficulty in merely
widening their field of applicability. Only in some such
way as this can we minimize the social dangers inherent
in the fact of individual inequality.

176

Chapter XII

EDUCATION

PROFESSIONAL educationists and, along with them,
certain psychologists, have been inclined to exaggerate
the efficacy of childhood training and the accidents of early
life. The Jesuits used to boast that, if they were given the
child at a sufficiently early age, they could answer for the
man. Similarly, the Freudians attribute all men’s spiritual
ills to their experience during early childhood. But the
Jesuits trained up free-thinkers and revolutionaries as well
as docile believers. And many psychologists are turning
away from the view that all neuroses are due to some crucial
experience in infancy. ‘Treatment in accordance with the
trauma theory is often,’ writes Jung, ‘extremely harmful
to the patient, for he is forced to search in his memory
— perhaps over a course of years — for a hypothetical event
in his childhood, while things of immediate importance are
grossly neglected.* The truth is that a man is affected, not
only by his past, but also by his present and what he fore¬
sees of the future. The conditioning process which takes
place during childhood does not completely predetermine
the behaviour of the man. To some extent, at any rate,
he can be re-conditioned by the circumstances of his
adolescent and adult life; to some extent his will is free,
and, if he so chooses and knows the right way to set about
it, he can re-condition himself. This re-conditioning may
be in a desirable direction; it may equally well be in an
undesirable one. For example, the conditioning which
children now receive in nursery schools is generally
excellent. That which they receive in more advanced
M 177

ENDS AND MEANS

schools is generally bad. In spite of the Jesuits and Freud,
the bad conditioning during adolescence effectively neutral¬
izes the results of good conditioning during childhood.
In his Anatomy of Frustration, Mr. H. G. Wells makes his
hero comment upon the distressing difference between ‘the
charm, the alert intelligence, the fearless freedom of the
modern child of six or seven and the slouching mental
futility of the ordinary youth in his later teens.’ The first
is the product of the nursery school ; the second of the ele¬
mentary and secondary, the preparatory and public school.
We educate young children for freedom, intelligence,
responsibility and voluntary co-operation; we educate
older children for passive acceptance of tradition and for
either dominance or subordination. This fact is sympto¬
matic of the uncertainty of purpose which prevails in the
Western democracies. The old patriarchal tradition co¬
exists in our minds with a newer and quite incompatible
hankering for freedom and democracy. In our enthusiasm
for the second, we train up our young children to be free,
self-governing individuals; having done which, we take
fright and, remembering that our society is still hierarchical,
still in great measure authoritarian, we devote all our
energies to teaching them to be rulers on the one hand and,
on the other, acquiescent subordinates.

Here, in passing, it may be remarked that ‘modem’
schools may be too ‘modem’ by half. There is a danger
that children may be given more freedom than they can
profitably deal with, more responsibility than they desire
or know how to take. To give children too much freedom
and responsibility is to impose a strain which many of
them find distressing and even exhausting. Exceptional
cases apart, children like to have security, like to feel the
support of a firm framework of moral laws and even of
rules of polite conduct. Within such a firmly established
framework there is plenty of room for a training in

178

EDUCATION

independence, responsibility and co-operation. The im¬
portant thing is to avoid extremes — the extreme of too
much liberty and responsibility on the one hand and, on
the other, of too much restriction, above all too much
restriction of the wrong sort. For the fixed framework
may just as well be a bad code as a good one. Children
may derive just as comforting a sense of security from the
moral code, say, of militarism as from that of non¬
attachment. But the results of an upbringing within a
framework of militaristic morality will be quite different
from the results of an upbringing in the ethic of non¬
attachment.

Coming back to the world as we know it, we have to
ask ourselves an important question. Even if we were to
prolong the nursery-school type of training — training, that
is to say, for self-government and responsible co-operation
— if we were to continue it far into adolescence, would we,
in the existing world, succeed in making any conspicuous
change for the better in society or the individuals composing
it? Practical life is the most efficient of all teachers. Take
adolescents trained for self-government and co-operation
and turn them loose into a hierarchical, competitive, success¬
worshipping society : what will happen ? Will the effects
of the conditioning received in school survive? Probably
not. Most likely, there will be a period of bewilderment
and distress; then, in the majority of cases, readjustment
to the circumstances of life. Which shows, yet once more,
that life is a whole and that desirable changes in one
department will not produce the results anticipated from
them, unless they are accompanied by desirable changes in
all other departments.

In the preceding paragraph I have suggested that a good
education is not that infallible cure of all our ills which
some enthusiasts have supposed it to be. Or rather that it
can become such a cure only when it is associated with

179

ENDS AND MEANS

good conditions in other departments of life. As usual it
is not a question of simple cause and effect, but of complex
interrelationship, of action and reaction. Good education
will be fully effective only when there are good social
conditions and, among individuals, good beliefs and feel¬
ings; but social conditions, and the beliefs and feelings of
individuals will not be altogether satisfactory until there is
good education. The problem of reform is the problem
of breaking out of a vicious circle and of building up a
virtuous one in its place.

The time has now come when we must ask ourselves
in what precisely a good education consists. In the first
years and months of infancy education is mainly physi¬
ological; the child, to use the language of the kennel, is
house-trained. In the past this seemed a trivial and un¬
savoury matter which it was at once unnecessary and
indelicate to discuss. In the words of Uncle Toby Shandy,
one wiped it up and said no more about it. Modern
psychologists have discovered that the subject is by no
means a trivial one and that, for the infant at least, excretion
and the process of house-training are matters of the deepest
concern. In this context I need mention only the work of
the late Dr. Suttie, whose book, The Origins of Love and
Hatred, contains an interesting chapter on the effects of
early house-training upon the emotional life of human
beings. These effects, it would seem, are generally bad;
and he gives reasons for supposing that our emotional
life would be much more serene if our training in cleanliness
had not started so early. Messy children are a nuisance;
but if, by allowing them to make their messes, we can
guarantee that they shall grow up into gentle, unquarrel-
some adults, free from what Suttie calls our ‘taboo on
tenderness,* the nuisance will be very bearable.

So much for the physiological education of infancy.
We now come to the moral and intellectual education of

180

EDUCATION

later childhood. The two are, of course, inseparable;
but it will be convenient to consider them one at a time.
Let us begin by asking in what a desirable moral education
consists. Our aim, let us recall, is to train up human beings
for freedom, for justice, for peace. How shall it be done?
In his recent book, Which Way to Peace ? Bertrand Russell
has written a significant paragraph on this subject. * Schools,*
he says, ‘have very greatly improved during the present
century, at any rate in the countries which have remained
democratic. In the countries which have military dictator¬
ships, including Russia, there has been a great retrogression
during the last ten years, involving a revival of strict
discipline, implicit obedience, a ridiculously subservient
behaviour towards teachers and passive rather than active
methods of acquiring knowledge. All this is rightly held
by the governments concerned to be a method of pro¬
ducing a militaristic mentality, at once obedient and
domineering, cowardly and brutal. . . . From the practice
of the despots, we can see that they agree with the
advocates of “modem” education as regards the connec¬
tion between discipline in schools and the love of war in
later life.’

Dr. Maria Montessori has developed the same theme in
a recent pamphlet: ‘The child who has never learned to
act alone, to direct his own actions, to govern his own will,
grows into an adult who is easily led and must always lean
upon others. The school child, being continually dis¬
couraged and scolded, ends by acquiring that mixture of
distrust of his own powers and of fear, which is called
shyness and which later, in the grown man, takes the form
of discouragement and submissiveness, of incapacity to put
up the slightest moral resistance. The obedience which
is expected of a child both in the home and in the school
— an obedience admitting neither of reason nor of justice —
prepares the man to be docile to blind forces. The punish-

181

ENDS AND MEANS

ment, so common in schools, which consists in subjecting
the culprit to public reprimand and is almost tantamount
to the torture of the pillory, fills the soul with a crazy,
unreasoning fear of public opinion, even an opinion
manifestly unjust and false. In the midst of these adapta¬
tions and many others which set up a permanent inferiority
complex, is bom the spirit of devotion — not to say of
idolatry — to the condottieri , the leaders.’ Dr. Montessori
might have added that the inferiority complex often finds
expression in compensatory brutality and cruelty. The
traditional education is a training for life in a hierarchical,
militaristic society, in which people are abjectly obedient
to their superiors and inhuman to their inferiors. Each
slave ‘takes it out of’ the slave below.

In the light of these two citations, we are able to under¬
stand more clearly why history should have taken the course
it actually has taken in recent years. The intensification of
militarism and nationalism, the rise of dictatorships, the
spread of authoritarian rule at the expense of democratic
government — these are phenomena which, like all other
events in human history, have a variety of interacting causes.
Most conspicuous among these, of course, are the economic
and political causes. But these do not stand alone. There
are also educational and psychological causes. Among
these must be reckoned the fact that, for the last sixty years,
all children have been subjected to the strict, authoritarian
discipline of state schools. In recent European history, such
a thing has never happened before. At certain periods, it
is true, and in certain classes of society, the discipline
imposed within the family was exceedingly strict. For
example, the seventeenth-century Puritan family was
governed almost as arbitrarily and as harshly as the family
of the Roman farmer or the Japanese Samurai. Samurai
and Roman had the same end in view — to train up children
in the military virtues, so that they should become good

182

EDUCATION

soldiers. The Puritan had a religious end in view; he
was imitating Jehovah; he was breaking his children’s will
because St. Augustine and Calvin had taught him that that
will was essentially evil. And yet, though the ends were
different, the results of the Puritan’s educational system
were the same as those attained by the essentially similar
system devised by the Roman and the Samurai for quite
another end. His children became first-rate soldiers; and
when they were not called upon to go to war, they exhibited
their militaristic qualities in the field of commerce and
industry, becoming (as Tawney and Weber have shown)
the first and almost the most ruthless of the capitalists.
The Puritans, I repeat, were strict disciplinarians within
the family. But not all the population was composed of
Puritans. When most children were brought up within
the family, a great many experienced only kindness and
consideration. In other cases spasmodic brutality alternated
with spasmodic affection. In yet others, no doubt, parents
would have liked to impose a strict Roman or Hebrew
discipline, but were too lazy to do so systematically, so
that the child came through almost unscathed. It is a
highly significant fact that the members of the upper
classes, who, as children had been under tutors or sent to
school, were always the actively militaristic element in
mediaeval and early modern society. The common people
were seldom spontaneously bellicose. War and imperialistic
brigandage were the preoccupation of their masters —
men who had enjoyed the privilege, during boyhood,
of being bullied by some sharp-tongued, hard-hitting
pedagogue.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, secondary
education for the middle classes was enormously extended;
in the second half, primary education was made universally
compulsory. For the first time, all children were subjected
to strict, systematic, unremitting discipline — the kind of

183

ENDS AND MEANS

discipline that ‘produces a militaristic mentality, at once
obedient and domineering.’ The members of the middle
and upper classes still undergo, in most countries, a longer
period of education than do the poor. This is why the
members of the middle and upper classes are still, on the
whole, more bellicose than the members of the working
class. (Such organizations as the Peace Pledge Union
have more adherents among the poor than among the
rich.) Even the poor, however, are now given several
years of authoritarian discipline. The decline of democracy
has coincided exactly with the rise to manhood and political
power of the second generation of the compulsorily
educated proletariat. This is no fortuitous coincidence.
By 1920 all the Europeans who had escaped compulsory
primary education were either dead or impotently old.
The masses had gone through, first, six or seven years
of drilling in school, then, in most countries, anything
from one to three years of conscription, and finally the
four years of the war. Enough military discipline to make
them ‘at once obedient and domineering.’ The most
actively domineering ones climbed to the top, the rest
obeyed and were given, as a reward, the privilege
of bullying those beneath them in the new political
hierarchies.

The early educational reformers believed that universal
primary and, if possible, secondary education would free
the world from its chains and make it ‘safe for democracy.’
If it has not done so— if, on the contrary, it has merely
prepared the world for dictatorship and universal war —
the reason is extremely simple. You cannot reach a given
historical objective by walking in the opposite direction.
If your goal is liberty and democracy, then you must
teach people the arts of being free and of governing them¬
selves. If you teach them instead the arts of bullying
and passive obedience, then you will not achieve the

184

EDUCATION

liberty and democracy at which you are aiming. Good
ends cannot be achieved by inappropriate means. The
truth is infinitely obvious. Nevertheless we refuse to act
upon it. That is why we find ourselves in our present
predicament.

The two types of education — education for freedom and
responsibility, education for bullying and subordination —
coexist in the democracies of the West, where nursery
schools belong to the first, and most other schools to the
second type. In Fascist countries, not even nursery schools
may belong to the first type. Significantly enough, the
Montessori Society of Germany was dissolved by the
political police in 1935; and, in July 1936, Mussolini’s
Minister of Education decreed the cessation of all official
Montessori activities in Italy. In the days of Lenin,
Russian education was based, at every stage, upon principles
essentially similar to those enunciated by Dr. Montessori.
In the manifestos and decrees published shortly after
Lenin’s seizure of power one may read such phrases as
these. ‘Utilization of a system of marks for estimating
the knowledge and conduct of the pupil is abolished. . . .
Distribution of medals and insignia is abolished. . . . The
old form of discipline which corrupts the entire life of
the school and the untrammelled development of the
personality of the child, cannot be maintained in the
schools of labour. The progress of labour itself develops
this internal discipline without which collective and rational
work is unimaginable. . . . All punishment in schools is
forbidden. . . . All examinations are abolished. . . . The
wearing of school uniform is abolished.’

On September 4th, 1935, a Decree on Academic Reform
was issued by the Stalin Government. This decree con¬
tained, among others, the following orders: ‘Instruct a
commission ... to elaborate a draft of a ruling for every
type of school. The ruling must have a categoric and

185

ENDS AND MEANS

absolutely obligatory character for pupils as well as for
teachers. This ruling must be the fundamental document
. . . which strictly establishes the regime of studies and the
basis for order in the school. . . . Underlying the ruling
on th£ conduct of pupils is to be placed a strict and
conscientious application of discipline. ... In the personal
record there will be entered for the entire duration of his
studies the marks of the pupil for every quarter, his prizes
and his punishments. ... A special apparatus of Communist
Youth organizers is to be installed for the surveillance of
the pupil inside and outside of school. They are to watch
over the morality and the state of mind of the pupils. . . .
Establish a single form of dress for the pupils of the
primary, semi-secondary and secondary schools, this
uniform to be introduced, to begin with, in 1936 in the
schools of Moscow.’

This decree was followed by another, issued in February
I937, ordering that the existing organizations for giving
military training to young children (from eight years old
upwards) should be strengthened and extended. Such
systems of infantile conscription already exist in the
Fascist countries and, if the threat of war persists, will
doubtless soon be imposed upon the democracies of the
West.

Any change for the worse in educational methods means
a change for the worse in the mentality of millions of
human beings during their whole lifetime. Early con¬
ditioning, as I have pointed out, does not irrevocably and
completely determine adult behaviour; but it does un¬
questionably make it difficult for individuals to think, feel
and act otherwise than as they have been taught to do in
childhood. Where social conditions are in harmony with
the prevailing system of education, the task of getting
outside the circle of early conditioning may be almost
insuperably difficult. Stalin has made it practically certain

186

EDUCATION

that, for the next thirty or forty years, the prevailing
Russian philosophy of life shall be essentially militaristic.

Discipline is not the only instrument of character training.
One of the major psychological discoveries of modem times
was the discovery that the play, not only of small children,
but (even more significantly) of adolescents and adults could
be turned to educational purposes. Partly by accident,
partly by subde and profound design, English educators
of the second half of the nineteenth century evolved the
idea of organizing sport for the purpose of training the
character of their pupils. At Rugby, during Tom Brown’s
schooldays, there were no organized games. Dr. Arnold
was too whole-heartedly a low-church social reformer, too
serious-minded a student of Old Testament history, to
pay much attention to a matter seemingly so trivial as
his boys’ amusements. A generation later, cricket and
football were compulsory in every English Public School,
and organized sport was being used more and more
consciously as a means of shaping the character of the
English gentleman.

Like every other instrument that man has invented,
sport can be used either for good or for evil purposes.
Used well, it can teach endurance and courage, a sense of
fair play and a respect for rules, co-ordinated effort and
the subordination of personal interests to those of the
group. Used badly, it can encourage personal vanity and
group vanity, greedy desire for victory and hatred for
rivals, an intolerant esprit de corps and contempt for people
who are beyond a certain arbitrarily selected pale. In
either case sport inculcates responsible co-operation; but
when it is used badly the co-operation is for undesirable
ends and the result upon the individual character is an
increase of attachment; when it is used well, the character
is modified in the direction of non-attachment. Sport can
be either a preparation for war or, in some measure, a

187

ENDS AND MEANS

substitute for war; a trainer either of potential war-mongers
or of potential peace-lovers; an educative influence forming
either militarists or men who will be ready and able to apply
the principles of pacifism in every activity of life. It is
for us to choose which part the organized amusements of
children and adults shall play. In the dictatorial countries
the choice has been made, consciously and without com¬
promise. Sport there is definitely a preparation for war —
doubly a preparation. It is used, first of all, to prepare
children for the term of military slavery which they will
have to serve when they come of age — to train them in
habits of endurance, courage, and co-ordinated effort, and
to cultivate that esprit de corps , that group-vanity and
group-pride which are the very foundations of the character
of a good soldier. In the second place, it is used as an
instrument of nationalistic propaganda. Football matches
with teams belonging to foreign countries are treated as
matters of national prestige ; victory is hailed as a triumph
over an enemy, a sign of racial or national superiority;
a defeat is put down to foul play and treated almost as a
casus belli. Optimistic theorists count sport as a bond
between nations. In the present state of nationalistic feeling
it is only another cause of international misunderstanding.
The battles waged on the football field and the race-track
are merely preliminaries to, and even contributory causes
of, more serious contests. In a world that has no common
religion or philosophy of life, but where every national
group practises its own private idolatry, international
football matches and athletic contests can do almost
nothing but harm.

The choice of the dictators has been, as I have said,
definite and uncompromising. They have decided that
sport shall be used above all as a preparation for war.
In the democratic countries we are, as usual, of two minds.
The idea of using s^ott solely as a ^te^atam fox 'wax

188

EDUCATION

seems to us shocking; at the same time we cannot bring
ourselves to use it, consciously and consistently, as an
instrument for training active peace-lovers. To some
extent we still use sport as a training for militarists. ‘The
battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton,’
and it was on these and a score or two of other school
playgrounds that the Indian Empire was conquered and
held down. The Amritsar massacre is a genuine, hall¬
marked product of the prefectorial system and compulsory
cricket. * His captain’s hand on his shoulder smote : “Play
up, and play the game.”’ The game was played in that
high-walled Jalianwallabagh to the tune cf I forget how
many hundreds of dead and wounded. But if India was
conquered and is now held down on the playing fields of
the English Public Schools, it is also administered there,
and administered with a considerable degree of justice and
incorruptibility. It is even in process (very gradually and
reluctantly, it is true) of being liberated on those same
fields. In the half-democracy of modern England, sport
is not used solely as a preparation for war and the fostering
of group- vanity and group-pride ; it is also used for teach¬
ing boys to behave with genuine decency — in other words,
as a training in non-attachment. In the world as it is at
present, we cannot afford to be of two minds. Either we
must make use of sport (and in general the whole educational
system) as a device for training up non-attached, non-
militaristic men and women; or else, under the urgent
threat of war, we must make up our minds to out-
Prussianize the Nazis and, on the playing fields of Eton
and the other schools, prepare for the winning of future
Waterloos. The first alternative involves great risk, but
may lead, not only the English, but the whole world besides,
out of the valley of destruction in which the human race
is now precariously living. The second alternative can
lead only to the worsening of international relations and

189

ENDS AND MEANS

ultimately to general catastrophe. Unhappily, it is towards
the second alternative that the rulers of England now seem
to be inclining.

I have spoken hitherto as though there were only one
type of sound education. But we have seen, in the chapter
on Inequality, that human beings are of several different
types. This being so, is it not a mistake to prescribe one
system of character-training? Should there not be several
systems? The answer to these questions is at once yes
and no. It is not a mistake to prescribe only one system
of character-training, because (to repeat the words used in
an earlier chapter) it is always in men’s power to move
away from the territories in which psychological divisions
exist, because it is always possible for them, if they so
desire, to find in the common world of action the site
for a broad, substantial bridge connecting even the most
completely incommensurable of psychological universes.
Character-training through self-government, through re¬
sponsible co-operation, through the voluntarily accepted
discipline of games, is something which goes on in that
common world of action, in which alone it is possible
for individuals of different psychological types to come
together. To prescribe one fundamental technique of
character-training is therefore no mistake. On the other
hand it would obviously be foolish not to adapt the one
fundamental technique to the different types of individual.
To discuss the nature of these variations would take a
long time and, since the matter is not one of fundamental
importance, I will proceed at once to a consideration of
my next topic, which is education as instruction.

In most of the civilized countries of the West primary
education has been universal and compulsory for sixty years
and more. Secondary and higher education have also been
made available — less freely in England than in America,
in France and Italy than in Germany, but everywhere to

190

EDUCATION

very considerable numbers of young people and adults.
When we compare the high hopes entertained by the early
advocates of universal education with the results actually
achieved after two generations of intensive and extensive
teaching, we cannot fail to be somewhat discouraged.
Millions of children have passed thousands of millions of
hours under schoolroom discipline, reading the Bible,
listening to pi-jaws — and the peoples of the world are
preparing for mutual slaughter more busily and more
scientifically than ever before; humanitarianism is visibly
declining; the idolatrous worship of strong men is on
the increase; international politics are conducted with a
degree of brutal cynicism unknown since the days of Pope
Alexander VI and Cesare Borgia. From moral we pass to
intellectual education. The best that has been thought and
said has been bawled by millions of pedagogues, millions
of times, into millions of little ears — and the yellow press,
the tabloids, the grands journaux d' information circulate by
scores of millions every morning and evening of the year;
each month the pulp magazines offer to millions of readers
their quota of true confessions, film fun, spicy detective
stories, hot mysteries; all day long in the movie palaces
millions of feet of imbecile and morally squalid film are
unrolled before a succession of audiences ; from a thousand
transmitting stations streams of music (mostly bad) and
political propaganda (mosdy false and malevolent) are
poured out, for eighteen hours out of the twenty-four,
into the contaminated ether. Instruments of marvellous
ingenuity and power on the one hand ; and, on the other,
ways of using those instruments which are either idiotic,
or criminal, or both together. Such are the moral and
intellectual fruits of our system of education. It is time
that something was done to change the nature of the tree
that bears these fruits.

In earlier paragraphs I have indicated what must be done

191

ENDS AND MEANS

if we wish to breed up a race of non-attached, actively
peace-loving men and women. We now have to consider
the best methods for fostering intelligence and imparting
knowledge.

At the present time education-as-instruction assumes
one of two forms — academic (or liberal) education and
technical education. Academic education is supposed to
do two things for those who are subjected to it; it is
supposed, first of all, to be a gymnastic, by means of which
they will be able to develop all the faculties of their minds,
from the power of logical analysis to that of aesthetic
appreciation; and, in the second place, it is supposed to
provide young people with a framework of historical, logical
and physico-chemico-biological relationships, within which
any particular piece of information acquired in later life
may find its proper and significant place. Technical
education, on the other hand, aims merely at practical
results and is supposed to give young people proficiency
in some particular trade or profession.

Recent investigations (for example, that which was
carried out a few years ago by the Scottish education
authorities) have given statistical form and content to the
conclusions which personal experience had long since
forced upon the practising teacher: namely, that academic
education (although grudgingly dispensed, at any rate in
its secondary and higher forms) is given to large numbers
of boys and girls who are unable to derive much profit
from it. To some extent, no doubt, this failure to profit
by academic education is due to the defects of our teaching
system or to the shortcomings of individual teachers.
(Teaching is an art, not a science; bad artists have always
greatly outnumbered the good.) However, when all allow¬
ances have been made, it seems perfectly clear that very
many young people — probably an absolute majority of
them — are congenitally incapable of receiving what academic

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EDUCATION

education has to offer. At the same time it is no less clear
that many of those who are able to stay the course of an
academic education emerge from the ordeal either as parrots,
gabbling remembered formulas which they do not really
understand ; or, if they do understand, as specialists, know¬
ing everything about one subject and taking no interest in
anything else; or, finally, as intellectuals, theoretically
knowledgeable about everything, but hopelessly inept in
the affairs of ordinary life. Something analogous happens v
to the pupils of technical schools. They come out into the
world, highly expert in their particular job, but knowing
very little about anything else and having no integrating
principle in terms of which they can arrange and give
significance to such knowledge as they may subsequently
acquire.

Can these defects in our educational system be remedied?

I think they can. We must begin by the frankest, the most
objectively scientific acceptance of the fact that human
beings belong to different types. Congenitally, the cere-
brotonic is not such a ‘good mixer’ as the viscerotonic,
who may be so deeply absorbed in his rich emotional life
as to be unwilling to concern himself with the intellectual
pursuits at which the cerebrotonic excels. Again, the
somatotonic is predestined by his psycho-physical make-up
to be more interested in, and more proficient at, muscular
than intellectual or emotional activity. Or take particular
talents; these, it would seem, are often given and can be
developed only at the expense of other talents. (For
example, good mathematicians are often musical, but very
rarely have any appreciation of the visual arts.) Then
there is the problem — still to some extent the subject of
controversy — of the degrees of intelligence. Intelligence
tests have been improved in recent years; but they will
become fully significant only when the results of the tests
are given in their proper context. The affirmation that
N 193

ENDS AND MEANS

A’s intelligence quotient is higher than B’s tells us, as it
stands, very little; if it is to be really significant, we must
know a number of other facts — whether, for example,
A and B belong to the same psycho-physical type or to
different types, whether they approximate to the pure type
or are gready mixed. And so on. The intelligence test,
then, is an imperfect instrument; but, imperfect as it is,
it has done something to give statistical form and content
to the universally held conviction that some people are
stupider than others. Having accepted the fact that human
beings belong to different types, are gifted with different
talents and have different degrees of intelligence, we must
attempt to give each the education best calculated to develop
his or her capacities to their utmost. In a rather crude
and inefficient way, this is what we are attempting to do
even now. Clever boys pass examinations and are given
scholarships that take them from primary to secondary
schools and from secondary schools to universities. Handy
boys are apprenticed or sent to technical schools to learn
some skilled trade. And so on. A rough and ready
system — a good deal rougher than readier. Its defects
are twofold. First, the methods employed for choosing
the candidates for the different kinds of education are far
from satisfactory. And, second, the kinds of education to
which successful candidates are subjected are even less
satisfactory than the methods of choice.

About the examination system it is unnecessary for me
to speak at length. Most educators agree in theory that
a single crucial examination does not provide the best test
of a person’s ability. Many of them have even passed from
theory to practice and are giving up the single, crucial
examination in favour of a series of periodical tests of
knowledge and intelligence and the reports, over a span
of years, of teachers and inspectors. Supplemented by an
expert grading in terms of psycho-physical type, the second

194

EDUCATION

method of choosing candidates for the various kinds of
education should prove quite satisfactory.

We must now consider the various kinds of education
to which (according to their type) young people should
be subjected.

We have seen that both the existing kinds of education,
technical as well as academic or liberal, are unsatisfactory.
The problem before us is this: to amend them in such a
way that technical education shall become more liberal,
and academic education a more adequate preparation for
everyday life in a society which is to be changed for
the better.

A liberal education is supposed to provide, first, a
gymnastic, second, a frame of reference. In other words,
it is supposed to be simultaneously a device for fostering
intelligence and the source of a principle of integration.

In academic education as we know it to-day, the principle
of integration is mainly scientific and historical. We can
put the matter in another way and say that the frame of
reference is logical and factual, and that the facts with
which the logical intellect is trained to deal are mainly
facts about the material universe and about humanity as
a part of the material universe. (History, as taught in
schools and colleges, is of two kinds : non-scientific history,
which is merely a branch of nationalistic propaganda, and
scientific history, which is almost a branch of physics.
Scientific historians treat facts about human beings as
though they were facts about the material universe. They
write about men as though men were gas molecules that
could be dealt with most effectively in terms of the law
of averages.)

The man who goes through a course of our academic
education may come out a parrot. In this case we say
that the education has failed of its purpose. Or he may
come out as an efficient specialist. In this case we say that

195

ENDS AND MEANS

the education has been only partially successful. Or else
(and when this happens we think that education has worked
very successfully) he may emerge as an intellectual — that
is to say, a person who has learned to establish relations
between the different elements of his sum of knowledge,
one who possesses a coherent system of relationships into
which he can fit all such new items of information as he
may pick up in the course of his life. We can define this
system of relationships in terms of what is known and
say (what has been said above) that it is predominantly
scientific and historical, logical and factual. We can also
define it in terms of the knower and say that it is pre¬
dominantly cognitive, not affective or conative.

The parrot repeats, but does not understand ; the narrow
specialist understands, but understands only his speciality ;
the accomplished intellectual understands the relations sub¬
siding between many sectors of apprehended reality, but
does so only theoretically. He knows, but is fired by no
desire to act upon his knowledge and has received no
training in such action. We see, then, that even the man
whom we are accustomed to regard as the successful
product of our academic education is an unsatisfactory
person.

To the pupils of our technical schools, no principle of
integration is given. Their teachers provide them with no
frame of reference, no coherent system of relationships.
They are taught a job and no more — equipped with a
technique and just so much of the theory lying behind that
particular technique as will make them efficient workers.
They emerge into the world wholly unprepared to deal in
an intelligent way with the facts of experience. The web
of understanding which, in the mind of the accomplished
intellectual, connects the atom with the spiral nebula and
both with this morning’s breakfast, the music of Bach, the

pottery of neolithic China^ ^hat ^ou this. mtwtV

19 6

EDUCATION

of cognitive relationships is all but completely lacking.
Bits of information exist for the technically educated man,
not as parts of one vast continuum, but in isolation, like
so many stars dotted about in a gulf of black incom¬
prehension. Or if there is a continuum, the chances are
that it will be composed of ideas borrowed from a Bronze-
Age theology, from anecdotal history, from philosophy as
taught in the newspaper and the films. The successful
product of technical education is as unsatisfactory as the
successful product of academic education.

What is the remedy for this state of things? Some
people have suggested that technical education should be
liberalized, like academic education, in terms of general
knowledge — above all, knowledge of scientific facts and
theories. They have suggested that technicians should
be given a principle of integration fundamentally similar
to that employed by the intellectual — a principle of
integration which the knower feels to be mainly cognitive
and which, defined in terms of the known, is mainly
scientific.

There are two good reasons for thinking that this
suggestion is unsound. First of all, the great majority of
those who undergo technical education are incapable of
using this principle of integration and, being incapable
of using it, are therefore uninterested in it. Even among
those who go through a course of our academic education,
only a few emerge as accomplished intellectuals. Most of
them emerge as parrots or specialists. (A good proportion
of these return to the schools as teachers and proceed to
train up other parrots and specialists.) Minds that delight
in what may be called large-scale knowledge — know¬
ledge, that is to say, of the relations subsisting between
things and events widely separated in space or time and
seemingly irrelevant one to another — are rare. Academic
education is supposed to impart such knowledge and to

197

ENDS AND MEANS

infect men and women with the desire to possess it; but
in actual fact few are so infected and few go out into the
world possessing it. To provide people with a principle
of integration which it is almost certain that they will not
wish or be able to use is mere foolishness.

Nor is this all. We have seen that even the accomplished
intellectual is a far from satisfactory person. His involve¬
ment with the world is only cognitive, not affective nor
conative. Moreover, the framework into which he fits his
experience is the framework of the natural sciences and of
history treated as though it too were one of the natural
sciences. He is concerned mainly with the material universe
and with humanity as a part of the material universe. He is
not concerned with humanity as human, as potentially more
than human. One of the results of this preoccupation with
the material universe is that, on the rare occasions when
the intellectual does become affectively and conatively
involved with the world of human reality, he tends to
exhibit a curious impatience which easily degenerates into
ruthlessness. Thinking of human beings ‘scientifically,’
as parts of the material universe, he doesn’t see why they
shouldn’t be handled as other parts of the material universe
are handled — dumped here, like coal or sand, made to
flow there, like water, ‘liquidated’ (the Russians preserve
the vocabulary of the intellectuals who prepared and made
their revolution), like so much ice over a fire.

Technical education is without a principle of integration;
academic education makes use of a principle that integrates
only on the cognitive plane, only in terms of a natural
science preoccupied with the laws of the material universe.
What is needed is another principle of integration — a prin¬
ciple which the technicians and the unsuccessful academes

will he congenitally capable o? using; a principle fhat wih
co-ordinate the scattered fragments, the island universes of
specialized or merely professional knowledge; a principle

198

EDUCATION

that will supplement the scientifico-historical frame of refer¬
ence at present used by intellectuals, that will help, perhaps,
to transform them from mere spectators of the human scene
into intelligent participants.

What should be the nature of this new principle of
integration? The answer seems clear enough, at any rate
in its main outlines : it should be psychological and ethical.
Within the new frame of reference, co-ordination of know¬
ledge and experience would be made in human terms; the
network of significant relations would be, not material,
but psychological; not indifferent to values, but moral;
not merely cognitive, but also affective and conative.

A concrete example will make my meaning clear. Here
is a young man in process of being trained in engineering
and practical mechanics. Under the existing dispensation,
the chances are that he will come out into the world pro¬
foundly ignorant of everything but his speciality. His
education will have failed to equip him with any principle
by means of which he can integrate his future experiences
and accessions of knowledge. Educationists trained up
in the existing academic schools believe that it will be
possible to liberalize his education by somehow leading
him from the practical and the particular to general scientific
theory. Give him, they say, a mastery of general scientific
theory, and he will have a principle by means of which he
will be able to integrate all his knowledge and experience.
In the abstract this scheme seems good enough; but in
practice it just doesn’t work. For the probability is that
the young man will not be interested in general scientific
theory, that he will have neither the wish nor the ability
to integrate his experience and his knowledge in terms of
the laws of the material universe. As a matter of brute
historical fact, the great advances in scientific theory have
very seldom been made by skilled artisans. The practical
man who knows his job is interested in the job and perhaps

1 99

ENDS AND MEANS

in just as much of the theory underlying his practice as
will enable him to do the job better. Very rarely does he
develop into the scientist, and few indeed are the fruitful
generalizations which we owe to such men. In general,
the advances in scientific theory have been made by men
of another type — men who did not concern themselves

!>rofessionally with technical problems, but who merely
ooked at them as outsiders and then proceeded to generalize
and rationalize what was merely particular and empirical.
Between the practical man and the man who is interested
in scientific theories of the universe at large a gulf is fixed.
They belong to different types. The attempt to liberalize
technical education by means of the principle which intel¬
lectuals use to integrate their experience is foredoomed
to failure.

Man is the only subject in which, whatever their type
or the degree of their ability, all men are interested. The
future engineer may be unable and unwilling to go far in
the study of the laws of the material universe. There will
be no difficulty, however, in getting him to take an interest
in human affairs. It is, therefore, in terms of human affairs
that his technical education can best be liberalized. There
would be no difficulty in integrating any technical subject
into a comprehensive scheme of relations within our human,
ethico-psychological framework. The technical course
would be accompanied by a course explaining the effects,
as measured in terms of good and evil, well-being and
suffering, of the technique in question. Our hypothetical
young man would learn, not only to be a mechanician,
but also to understand the ways in which machinery
affects, has affected and is likely to affect, the lives o£
men and women. He could begin with the effects of
machinery upon the individual — such effects as are dis¬
cussed, for example, in Stuart Chase’s essay in contemporary
history. Men and Machines, or in the Hammonds* account

200

EDUCATION

of the industrial revolution. Next, the broader social effects
could be studied — the transformation of technically back¬
ward countries, the destruction of old-established trades,
the creation of new industries. In these and similar ways
a complete network of relationships could be created in
the student’s mind, a network binding together things
seemingly as irrelevant to one another as down-draught
carburetters and the education of children in New Mexico,
aluminium alloys and the slaughter of Abyssinians and
Spaniards, viscose fibres and the ruin of peasants in Japan
and the Rhone Valley. A similar frame of psychological,
sociological and ethical reference could be used, not indeed
to replace, but to supplement the frame of scientific refer¬
ence used in academic education. The technician would
integrate his experience and special knowledge in human
terms only; the intellectual would integrate in terms of the
non-human material universe as well as of the human
world. Both educations would thus be made genuinely
liberal — liberal in the academic sense, because even the
technical student would be given a wide range of knowledge
and a principle of integration; liberal also in the political
sense, because it would be hard indeed to receive such an
education and not emerge with a wider range of sympathy,
a keener desire to act.

It would be impossible, in the space at my disposal, to
give an account of all the hopeful experiments in education
undertaken in recent years. The most I can do is to mention
a few of the more outstanding essays in the liberalization of
our existing system. Of Dr. Montessori’s work for young
children and of the reasons why we have hesitated to apply
her methods to the teaching of adolescents, I have already
spoken. It is true, as Mr. Russell points out in the passage
I have quoted above, that, in the democratic countries, our
hesitation has not amounted to a complete refusal to apply
the Montessori principles. But the applications have been

201

ENDS AND MEANS

partial and have almost always been made in an intrinsically
un-Montessorian context. Consider, by way of example,
the English Public Schools. Within a fixed framework,
their pupils are in a measure self-governing. Unhappily the
rules, customs and loyalties which constitute the support¬
ing framework are the rules, customs and loyalties of a hier¬
archical, competitive, imperialistic society. Such training
in self-government and self-teaching as the young people
receive serves merely to make them more efficient and enter¬
prising members of this intrinsically undesirable society.
Something similar takes place in an army preparing for
war in modem conditions. The old-fashioned drill, by
means of which soldiers were conditioned to overcome
fear, cultivate rage and blindly obey their superiors, is an
inadequate training for men who are to fight with modern
weapons. The mechanization of war has made necessary a
new kind of training. The soldier has to be educated to
co-operate with small groups of his fellows, to make quick
decisions, to use his judgment. Tennyson’s advice to
soldiers was good enough in the eighteen-fifties. But for
the crew of a tank or a motorized machine-gun unit, doing
and dying is not sufficient; they are also required to reason
why. Within the framework of the rules, customs and
loyalties of militarism, soldiers are taught to use their
intelligence and act upon their own initiative. To this
extent Montessori principles have been adopted even in
the army. But, under the present dispensation, the partially
self-governing and self-teaching soldier is not being trained
for freedom and justice any more than is his younger
brother, the partially self-governing and self-teaching
schoolboy.

A particularly hopeful attempt to enlarge the scope and
humanize the character of academic education was made,
in the years immediately following the War, by Dr. A. E.
Morgan (subsequently director of the Tennessee Valley

202

EDUCATION

Authority) at Antioch College. Under the educational
dispensation developed by Dr. Morgan, periods of study,
as has been noted earlier, are alternated with periods of
labour in the factory, the office, the farm — even the prison
and the asylum. Three months of theory are supplemented
and illustrated by three months of practice. The intellectual
is taught to make use of a frame of human reference as well
as a frame of natural-scientific and historical reference —
and taught, what is more, in the most effective of all
possible ways, in terms of physical contact with actual
samples of human reality. His principle of integration is
not merely cognitive; thanks to an educational system
which compels him to take part in many different kinds of
practical work, it is also conative and affective.1

A system of education somewhat similar to that developed
at Antioch is used in the schools attached to factories in
Soviet Russia. All such systems are but the modem ex¬
tensions and systematizations of the traditional Hebrew
system of education. ‘He who does not teach his son a
trade/ so it is written in the Talmud, ‘virtually teaches
him to steal.’ St. Paul was not only a scholar; he was
also a tent-maker. The ideal of the scholar and the gentle¬
man originated among the slave-owning philosophers of
Athens and Ionia. It is one of the ironies of history that
the modem world should have taken over from the Hebrews
all that was worst in their cultural heritage — their ferocious
Bronze-Age literature; their paeans in praise of war; their
tales of divinely inspired slaughter and sanctified treachery;
their primitive belief in a personal, despotic and passionately
unscrupulous God; their low, Samuel-Smilesian notion
that virtue deserves a reward in cash and social position.
It is, I repeat, one of the ironies of history that we should

1 Note in this context the use of ‘occupational therapy’ in mental
disease. There are certain forms of mental disease for which hand¬
work is the best cure.

203

ENDS AND MEANS

have taken over all this and have rejected the admirably
sensible rabbinical tradition of an all-round education, at
once academic and technical, in favour of the narrow and
immoral ideal of the Hellenic slavers.

To perfect the Antioch system, it would probably be
necessary to extend its provisions from the student to the
teaching body. The fossil professor is a familiar object
to those who have rambled through university towns.
The onset of petrifaction might be delayed if teachers
were given periodically, not merely sabbatical, but also
non-sabbatical years — years during which they would have
to work at some job entirely unconnected with the academic
world.

A good deal of attention has been paid in recent years
to the education of the emotions through the arts. In many
schools and colleges, music, ‘dramatics,’ poetry and the
visual arts are used more or less systematically as a device
for widening consciousness and imparting to the flow of
emotion a desirable direction.

Music, for example, may be used to teach a number of
valuable lessons. When they listen to a piece of good
music, people of limited ability are given the opportunity
of actually experiencing the thought- and feeling-processes
of a man of outstanding intellectual power and exceptional
insight. (This applies, of course, to all the arts; but there
is reason to believe that more people are able to participate,
and participate more intensely, in the experience of the
music-maker than in that of the painter, say, or the
architect, or perhaps even the imaginative writer.) The
finest works of art are precious, among other reasons,
because they make it possible for us to know, if only
imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like
to think subtly and feel nobly.

Music also serves to teach a very valuable kind of
emotional co-operation. Singing and playing instrij

204

EDUCATION

together, people learn, not only to perform complicated
actions requiring great muscular skill and the mind’s entire
attention, but also to feel in harmony, to be united in a
shared emotion.

Coming next to literature, we see that the acting of plays
can also be used for the purpose of emotional training.
By playing the part of a character who is either very like
or very unlike himself, a person can be made aware of his
own nature and of his relations with others. To some
extent, it may be, the watching of plays can serve the same
purpose. We must, however, be on our guard against
attributing to drama educative virtues which, at any rate
in its present form, it certainly does not possess. In
relation to the modern play or film, it is sheer nonsense
to talk about the Aristotelian catharsis. A Greek tragedy
was much more than a play ; it was also a cathedral service,
it was also one of the ceremonies of the national religion.
The performance was an illustration of the scriptures, an
exposition of theology. Modern dramas, even the best of
them, are none of these things. They are, essentially,
secular. People go to them, not in order to be reminded
of their philosophy of life, not to establish some kind of
communion with their gods, but merely to ‘get a kick,’
merely to titillate their feelings. The habit of self-titillation
grows with what it feeds upon. For the Greeks, dramatic
festivals were ‘solemn and rare.’ For us they are an almost
daily stimulant. Abused as we abuse it at present, dramatic
art is in no sense cathartic; it is merely a form of emotional
masturbation. All arts can be used as a form of self-abuse ;
but masturbation through the drama is probably the worst
form of artistic debauchery, and for this reason: acting is
one of the most dangerous of trades. It is the rarest thing
to find a player who has not had his character affected for
the worse by the practice of his profession. Nobody can
make a habit of self-exhibition, nobody can exploit his

205

ENDS AND MEANS

personality for the sake of exercising a kind of hypnotic
power over others, and remain untouched by the process.
(In the Oneida community it was found that ‘prima donna
fever/ as John Noyes called it, could produce disruptive
effects of extraordinary magnitude. Noyes, who was a
psychologist of genius and the shrewdest of practical
moralists, took the greatest pains to prevent a recrudes¬
cence of this disease, which has been the ruin of so many
actors and virtuosi.1) Acting inflames the ego in a way
which few other professions do. For the sake of enjoying
regular emotional self-abuse, our societies condemn a con¬
siderable class of men and women to a perpetual inability
to achieve non-attachment. It seems a high price to pay
for our amusements.

The chief educative virtue of literature consists in
its power to provide its readers with examples which
they can follow. To some extent, all human beings
are, in Jules de Gaultier’s phrase, ‘bovaristic’ — that is
to say they have a capacity for seeing themselves as
they are not, for playing a part other than that which
heredity and circumstances seem to have assigned to them.
The heroine of Flaubert’s novel came to a tragic end; but
there is no reason why all bovaristic behaviour should turn
out so disastrously as it did in the case of the original
Mme Bovary. There is good bovarism as well as bad
bovarism. Educationists have always known this fact and,
from time immemorial, have tried to mould the character
of their pupils by providing them with literary models to
be imitated in real life. Such models may be mythical,
historical or fictional. Hercules and Thor are instances of
the first kind of heroic model; Plutarch’s statesmen and
soldiers and the saints of the Christian calendar are instances
of the historical model ; Hamlet and Werther, Julien Sorel

1 See A Yankee Saint (the latest and best biography of Noyes), by
Robert Allerton Parker (New York, 1935).

206

EDUCATION

and Alyosha Karamazov, Juliet and Lady Chatterley are
instance of fictional heroes and heroines upon whom, at
one time or another, great numbers of human beings have
patterned themselves. In all cases, whether mythical,
historical or fictional, some measure of literary art is
necessary; if the story is told inadequately, the pupil will
remain unimpressed, will feel no desire to imitate the
model set before him. Hence the importance, even in
ethical instruction, of good art. Moreover, every genera¬
tion must produce its stock of imitable models, described
in terms of an art which is not merely good, but also
up-to-date. Old good art can never have the same appeal
as new good art; for most people, indeed, it cannot rival
with new bad art. More people bovarize themselves upon
the models provided by the pulp magazines than upon those
provided by Shakespeare. There are two reasons for this.
The first is that, though crude and incompetent, the pulp
magazines deal with contemporary characters, while Shake¬
speare, though incomparable in his power to ‘put things
across,’ is more than three hundred years out of date;
the second must be sought in the fact that the moral effort
required to imitate Shakespeare’s heroes, and even his
villains, is far greater than that which is needed to imitate
the personages of pulp-magazine fiction. Pulp-magazine
stories are transcriptions of the commonest and easiest day¬
dreams — dreams of sexual titillation, of financial success,
of luxury, of social recognition. Shakespeare’s personages
are on a larger scale. They embody the hardly realizable,
extravagant day-dreams of paranoiacs — of men who dream
of being lovers uniquely faithful, proud saviours of their
country uniquely disinterested and uniquely adored, villains
uniquely vengeful and malignant. In this context it is worth
remarking that except for the Duke in Measure for Measure
— and he is scarcely a human being, only a symbol —
Shakespeare gives no picture of a non-attached human

207

ENDS AND MEANS

being. Indeed, good pictures of non-attached men and
women are singularly rare in the world’s literature. The
good people in plays and novels are rarely complete, fully
adult personages. They are either a bit deficient, like
Dostoievsky’s epileptic Prince Mishkin, like Gorki’s virtu¬
ous but imbecile hermit, or Dickens’s charitable but utterly
infantile Cheerybles, or else, like Pickwick, they are made
lovable by being represented as eccentric to the point of
absurdity; we can tolerate their superiority in virtue be¬
cause we feel superior in common sense. Finally and most
frequently they are shown as being good without being
intelligent, like Colonel Newcome, or the peasant who
talks to Tolstoy’s Pierre in prison. These individuals are
personally good within an abominably bad system which
they do not even question. Men who are profoundly good
without being intelligent have often attained to sainthood.
The Cure d’Ars and St. Peter Claver are cases in point.
One must admire such men for the, by ordinary standards,
superhuman qualities of character which they display. At
the same time, it is, I think, necessary to admit that they
are not complete, not fully adult. Perfect non-attachment
demands of those who aspire to it, not only compassion
and charity, but also the intelligence that perceives the
general implications of particular acts, that sees the in¬
dividual being within the system of social and cosmic
relations of which he is but a part. In this respect, it
seems to me, Buddhism shows itself decidedly superior to
Christianity. In the Buddhist ethic stupidity, or unaware¬
ness, ranks as one of the principal sins. At the same time
people are warned that they must take their share of
responsibility for the social order in which they find
themselves. One of the branches of the Eightfold Path is
said to be ‘right means of livelihood.’ The Buddhist is
expected to refrain from engaging in such socially harmful
occupations as soldiering, or the manufacture of arms and

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EDUCATION

intoxicating drugs. Christian moralists make the enormous
mistake of not insisting upon right means of livelihood.
The church allows people to believe that they can be good
Christians and yet draw dividends from armament factories,
can be good Christians and yet imperil the well-being of
their fellows by speculating in stocks and shares, can be
good Christians and yet be imperialists, yet participate in
war. All that is required of the good Christian is chastity
and a modicum of charity in immediate personal relations.
An intelligent understanding and appraisal of the long-range
consequences of acts is not insisted upon by Christian
moralists.1 One of the results of this doctrinal inadequacy
is that there is a singular lack, as well in imaginative as in
biographical literature, of intelligently virtuous, adultly
non-attached personages, upon whom young people may
model their behaviour. This is a deplorable state of things.
Literary example is a powerful instrument for the moulding
of character. But most of our literary examples, as we
have seen, are mere idealizations of the average sensual man.
Of the more heroic characters the majority are just
grandiosely paranoiac; the others are good, but good
incompletely and without intelligence; are virtuous within
a bad system which they fail to see the need of changing;
combine a measure of non-attachment in personal matters
with loyalty to some creed, such as Fascism or Communism
or Nationalism, that entails, if acted upon, the commission
of every kind of crime. There is a great need for literary
artists as the educators of a new type of human being.
Unfortunately most literary artists are human beings of
the old type. They have been educated in such a way
that, even when they are revolutionaries, they think in
terms of the values accepted by the essentially militaristic

1 In the Middle Ages the Church made a serious effort to moralize
economic activity. The attempt, as Tawney has shown in Religion
and the Rise of Capitalism , was abandoned after the Reformation.

o 209

ENDS AND MEANS

society of which they are members. Quis custodiet custodes ?
Who will educate the educators? The answer, of course,
is painfully simple : nobody but the educators themselves.
Our human world is composed of an endless series of vicious
circles, from which it is possible to escape only by an act,
or rather a succession of acts, of intelligently directed will.

Dictatorial governments regard free intelligence as their
worst enemy. In this they are probably perfectly right.
Tyranny cannot exist unless there is passive obedience
on the part of the tyrannized. But passive obedience to
authority is not compatible with the free exercise of
intelligence. It is for this reason that all tyrants try so
hard either to suppress intelligence altogether or to compel
it to exercise itself only within certain prescribed limits and
along certain channels carved out for it in advance. Hence
the systematic use which all dictators make of the
instrument of propaganda.

In societies more primitive than our own, societies in
which a traditional religion and a traditional code of
morality are unquestioningly accepted, there is no need of
deliberate propaganda. People behave in the traditional
way ‘by instinct,’ and never stop dispassionately to con¬
sider what they are doing, feeling, thinking. Even in
societies like ours there is an astonishing amount of un¬
questioning acceptance of customary behaviour-patterns,
thought-patterns, feeling-patterns. A very large number
even of intelligent men and women use their intelligence
only for the purpose of making a good job of what is
traditionally regarded as their duty; they seldom or never
use it to pass judgment upon the duty itself. Hence the
dismal spectacle of scientists and technicians using all
their powers to help their country’s rulers to commit mass
murder with increased efficiency and indiscriminateness;
of scholars and men of letters prostituting their talents for
the purpose pf bolstering national prestige with learned lies

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EDUCATION

and fascinating rhetoric. Even in the democratic countries,
intelligence is generally used only to create (in Thoreau’s
words) improved means to unimproved ends — to ends that
are dictated by socially sanctioned prejudice and the lowest
passions. Such, I repeat, is generally the case; but
fortunately not always. Where intelligence is permitted
to exercise itself freely, there will always be a few people
prepared to use their wits for the purpose of judging
traditional ends as well as for devising effective means to
those ends. It is thanks to such individuals that the
very idea of desirable change is able to come into
existence.

For the dictator such questioning free intelligences are
exceedingly dangerous ; for it is essential, if he is to pre¬
serve his position, that the socially sanctioned prejudices
should not be questioned and that men should use their
wits solely for the purpose of finding more effective means
to achieve those ends which are compatible with dictator¬
ship. Hence the persecution of daring individuals, the
muzzling of the press, and the systematic attempt by means
of propaganda to create a public opinion favourable to
tyranny. In the dictatorial countries the individual is
subjected to propaganda, as to military training, almost
from infancy. All his education is propagandist and, when
he leaves school, he is exposed to the influence of a con¬
trolled press, a controlled cinema, a controlled literature,
a controlled radio. Within a few years controlled television
and possibly a controlled teletype service functioning in
every home will have to be added to this list of weapons
in the dictator’s armoury. Nor is this all; it is likely
enough that pharmacology will be called in as an ally of
applied psychology. There are drugs, such as a mixture
of scopolamine and chloral, that enormously increase
the individual’s suggestibility. It is more than likely
that dictators will soon be making use of such sub-

211

ENDS AND MEANS

stances in order to heighten their subjects’ loyalty and
blind faith.

In the democratic countries, intelligence is still free to
ask whatever questions it chooses. This freedom, it is
almost certain, will not survive another war. Educationists
should therefore do all they can, while there is yet time,
to build up in the minds of their charges a habit of resist¬
ance to suggestion. If such resistance is not built up, the
men and women of the next generation will be at the mercy
of any skilful propagandist who contrives to seize the
instruments of information and persuasion. Resistance to
suggestion can be built up in two ways. First, children
can be taught to rely on their own internal resources and
not to depend on incessant stimulation from without.
This is doubly important. Reliance on external stimulation
is bad for the character. Moreover, such stimulation is the
stuff with which propagandists bait their hooks, the jam
in which dictators conceal their ideological pills. An
individual who relies on external stimulations thereby
exposes himself to the full force of whatever propaganda
is being made in his neighbourhood. For a majority of
people in the West, purposeless reading, purposeless
listening-in, purposeless looking at films have become
addictions, psychological equivalents of alcoholism and
morphinism. Things have come to such a pitch that there
are many millions of men and women who suffer real
distress if they are cut off for a few days or even a few
hours from newspapers, radio music, moving pictures.
Like the addict to a drug, they have to indulge their vice,
not because the indulgence gives them any active pleasure,
but because, unless they indulge, they feel painfully sub¬
normal and incomplete. Without papers, films and wireless
they live a diminished existence ; they are fully themselves
only when bathing in sports news and murder trials, in
radio music and talk, in die vicarious terrors, triumphs and

212

EDUCATION

eroticisms of the films. Even by intelligent people, it is
now taken for granted that such psychological addictions
are inevitable and even desirable, that there is nothing to
be alarmed at in the fact that the majority of civilized men
and women are now incapable of living on their own
spiritual resources, but have become abjectly dependent on
incessant stimulation from without. Recently, for example,
I read a little book in which an eminent American biologist
gives his view about the Future. Science, he prophesies,
will enormously increase human happiness and intelligence
— will do so, among other ways, by providing people with
micro-cinematographs which they can slip on like spectacles
whenever they are bored. Science will also, no doubt,
be able very soon to supply us with micro-pocket-flasks
and micro-hypodermic-syringes, micro-alcohol, micro¬
cigarettes and micro-cocaine. Long live science !

How can children be taught to rely upon their own
spiritual resources and resist the temptation to become
reading-addicts, hearing-addicts, seeing-addicts? First of
all, they can be taught how to entertain themselves —
by making things, by playing musical instruments, by
purposeful study, by scientific observation, by the practice
of some art, and so on. But such education of the hand
and the intellect is not enough. Psychology has its
Gresham’s Law; its bad money drives out the good.
Most people tend to perform the actions that require least
effort, to think the thoughts that are easiest, to feel the
emotions that are most vulgarly commonplace, to give
rein to the desires that are most nearly animal. And they
will tend to do this even if they possess the knowledge and
skill to do otherwise. Along with the necessary knowledge
and skill must be given the will to use them, even under
the pressure of incessant temptation to take the line of least
resistance and become an addict to psychological drugs.
Most people will not wish to resist these temptations unless

213

ENDS AND MEANS

they have a coherent philosophy of life, which makes it
reasonable and right for them to do so, and unless they
know some technique by means of which they can be sure
of giving practical effect to their good intentions.

Video meliora proloque;

Deteriora sequor.

To see and approve the better is useless, if one then regularly
proceeds to pursue the worse. What is the philosophy of
life that should be taught? And what are the proper
techniques by means of which people can persuade them¬
selves to act upon their convictions ? These are questions
which will be dealt with in a later chapter.

So much for the first method of heightening resistance to
suggestion. It will be seen that this consists essentially in
teaching young people to dispense with the agreeable
stimulations offered by the newspapers, wireless and films —
stimulations which serve, as I have said, to bait the pro¬
pagandist’s hooks. A boycott of sports news and murder
stories, of jazz and variety, of film love, film thrills and film
luxury, is simultaneously a boycott of political, economic
and ethical propaganda. Hence the vital importance of
teaching as many young people as possible how to amuse
themselves and at the same time inducing them to wish to
amuse themselves.

The other method of heightening resistance to suggestion
is purely intellectual and consists in training young people
to subject the devices of the propagandists to critical
analysis. The first thing that educators must do is to
analyse the words currently used in newspapers, on plat¬
forms, by preachers and broadcasters. What, for example,
does the word * nation ’ mean ? To what extent are speakers
and writers justified in talking of a nation as a person?
Who precisely is the ‘she,’ of whom people speak when
discussing a nation's fotdgn pcMcs} Ha

EDUCATION

imperial power. She must defend her Empire.’) In what
sense can a nation be described as having a will or national
interests? Are these interests and will the interests and
will of the entire population? or of a majority? or of a
ruling caste and a few professional politicians? In what
way, if any, does ‘the state’ differ from Messrs. Smith,
Brown, Jones and the other gentlemen who happen for
the moment to have secured political power? Given the
character of Brown, Jones etc., why should ‘the state’
be regarded as an institution worthy of almost religious
respect ? Where does national honour reside ? Why would
the loss of Hong-Kong, for example, be a mortal blow to
Britain’s honour, while its seizure after a war in which
Britain attempted to force the Chinese to buy opium was
in no way a stain upon the same honour? And so on.
‘Nation’ is only one of several dozens of rich and resonant
words which are ordinarily accepted without a thought,
but which it is essential, if we would think clearly, that
we should subject to the most searching analysis.

It is no less important that children should be taught to
examine all personifications, all metaphors and all ab¬
stractions occurring in the articles they read, the speeches
they listen to. They must learn to translate these empty
words into terms of concrete contemporary reality. When
an Asquith says, ‘we shall not sheathe the sword which we
have not lightly drawn,’ when an Archbishop of Canterbury
affirms ‘that force, the sword, is the instrument of God for
the protection of the people,’ they must learn to translate
this noble verbiage into the language of the present.
Swords have played no appreciable part in war for the
last two hundred years. In 1914 Asquith’s sword was
high explosives and shrapnel, machine-guns, battleships,
submarines. In 1937 the ‘instrument of God for the pro¬
tection of the people’ was all the armaments existing in 1914
plus tanks, plus aeroplanes, plus thermite, plus phosgene,

215

ENDS AND MEANS

plus arsenic smokes, plus Lewisite and many other in¬
struments of murder, more efficient and more indiscriminate
than anything known in the past. It is frequently in the
interest of the rulers of a country to disguise the true facts
of contemporary reality under thick veils of misleading
verbiage. It is the business of educators to teach their
pupils to translate these picturesque or empty phrases into
the language of contemporary reality.

Verbal propaganda is not the only nor even, perhaps,
the most effective form of organized suggestion. There
is another kind, specially favoured by modem commercial
propagandists and used from time immemorial by such
non-commercial advertisers as kings, priests and soldiers.
This consists in arbitrarily associating the idea which is to
be suggested with some object, some image, some sound,
some literary description, that is either intrinsically delight¬
ful or in some way suggestive of pleasantness. For example,
the advertiser of soap will show a picture of a young
voluptuous female, about to take a bath among plumbing
fixtures of pink marble and chromium. The advertiser of
cigarettes will show people dining in what the lady novelists
describe as ‘ faultless evening dress,’ or reproduce the photo¬
graph of some well-known film star, millionairess, or titled
lady. The advertiser of whisky will illustrate a group of
handsome men lounging in luscious upholstery and being
waited upon by the most obsequious of family retainers.
The aim in all such cases is the same — to associate the
idea of the goods offered for sale with ideas which the
public already regards as delightful, such as the idea of
erotic pleasure, the idea of personal charm, the idea of
wealth and social superiority. In other cases the idea of
the merchandise is associated with intrinsically delightful
landscapes, with funny or pathetic children, with flowers
or pet animals, with scenes of family life. In countries
where radio advertising is permitted, commercial pro-

216

EDUCATION

pagandists find it worth their while to associate the idea
of their cars, their cigarettes, their breakfast cereal or what
not with performances by comedians or concerts of vocal
or orchestral music. This last is the type of association
favoured by kings, soldiers and priests. From the begin¬
ning of history, rulers have ‘put themselves across’ by
associating the idea of their government with magnificent
pageantry, with impressive architecture, with every kind
of rare, splendid and beautiful thing. It is the same with
the soldier. Military music intoxicates like wine, and a
military review is, in its own way, no less inebriating.
(The author of the Song of Songs goes so far as to establish
an emotional equivalence between a sexually desirable per¬
son and an army with banners.) Priests make use of an
essentially similar type of propaganda. Systematically,
they have always associated the idea of their god and of
themselves as the god’s representatives with intrinsically
delightful works of art of every kind, from music and
architecture to dressmaking, with symbols of wealth
and power, with organized joy and organized terror and
mystery even, in many religions, with organized cruelty
and lust.

Propaganda of this kind generally proves irresistible.
Cigarettes are bought in ever-increasing quantities; ever
vaster and more loyal crowds flock to military reviews, to
royal and dictatorial pageants, to the splendid ceremonials
of nationalistic idolatry. Once again resistance to sug¬
gestion can be heightened only by sharpening the critical
faculty of those concerned. The art of dissociating ideas
should have a place in every curriculum. Young people
must be trained to consider the problems of government,
international politics, religion and the like in isolation from
the pleasant images, with which a particular solution of these
problems has been associated, more or less deliberately, by
those whose interest it is to make the public think, feel and

21?

ENDS AND MEANS

judge in a certain way. The training might begin with a
consideration of popular advertising. Children could be
shown that there is no necessity and organic connection
between the pretty girl in her expensive dressing-gown
and the merits of the tooth-paste she is intended to
advertise. This lesson might be brought home by practical
demonstrations. Chocolates could be wrapped in a paper
adorned with realistic pictures of scorpions, and castor-oil
and quinine distributed from containers in the form of
Sealyham terriers or Shirley Temple. Having mastered
the art of dissociation in the field of commercial advertising,
our young people could be trained to apply the same
critical methods to the equally arbitrary and even more
dangerously misleading associations which exist in the
fields of politics and religion. They would be shown that
it is possible for a man to get the fullest aesthetic enjoyment
out of a military or religious pageant without allowing
that enjoyment in any way to influence his judgment
regarding the value of war as a political instrument or the
truth and moral usefulness of the religion in question.
They would be taught to consider monarchy and
dictatorship on their own political and ethical merits, not
on the choreographical merits of processions and court
ceremonials, not on the architectural merits of palaces,
not on the rhetorical merits of speeches, not on the
organizational merits of a certain kind of technical
efficiency. And so on.

That the art of dissociation will ever be taught in schools
under direct state control is, of course, almost infinitely
improbable. Those who use the power of the state always
desire to preserve a certain given order of things. They
therefore always try to persuade or compel their subjects
to accept, as right and reasonable, certain solutions (hardly
ever the best) of the outstanding problems of politics and
economics. Hence the insistence, on the part of govem-

218

EDUCATION

ments, that the ideas embodying these solutions shall always
be associated with intrinsically pleasing images. The art
of dissociation can be taught only by individuals who are
not under direct government control. This is one of the
reasons why it is so important that state-aided education
shall, wherever possible, be supplemented by education in
the hands of private persons. Some of this privately
organized education will certainly be bad; some will
probably exist solely for reasons of snobbery. But a few
of the private educators will be genuinely experimental and
intelligent; a few will use their blessed independence to
make the desirable change which state-controlled teachers
are not allowed to initiate. ‘ Les enfants ri appartiennent
qua la Rlpublique .' So wrote the Marquis de Sade. That
such a man should have been so ardent a supporter of
exclusive state education is a fact that, in the light of
the history of contemporary dictatorships, is highly
significant.

Using an arbitrary, but unavoidable, system of classifica¬
tion, I have spoken in turn of education as character¬
training, education as instruction, education as training of
the emotions. It is now necessary to speak of another
form of education, a form which must underlie and
accompany all the other forms, namely the education
of the body.

In the world as we know it, mind and body form a single
organic whole. What happens in the mind affects the body ;
what happens in the body affects the mind. Education
must therefore be a process of physical as well as mental
training.

Of what nature should this physical training be? The
question cannot be properly answered except in terms of
our first principles. We are agreed that the ideal human
being is one who is non-attached. Accordingly all
education, including physical education, must ultimately

219

ENDS AND MEANS

aim at producing non-attachment. If we would discover
which is the best form of physical training, we must
begin by setting forth the physical conditions of non¬
attachment.

First of all, it is pretty clear that non-attachment is very
hardly realizable by anyone whose body is seriously mal¬
adjusted. A maladjusted body affects the mind in several
ways. When the maladjustment is very great, the body
is subject to pain and discomfort. Pain and discomfort
invade the field of consciousness, with the result that the
owner of the body finds great difficulty in not identifying
himself with his faulty physical processes. From a being
who is potentially more than what is conventionally
styled a ‘person,’ he is reduced by pain and discomfort
to a being who is less than a person. He comes to
be equated with one of the body’s badly functioning
organs.

In other cases pain and discomfort may not be present;
but the maladjusted body may be subject, without its
owner being aware of the fact, to chronic strains and stresses.
What happens in the body affects the mind. Physical strains
set up psychological strains. The body is the instrument
used by the mind to establish contact with the outside world.
Any modification of this instrument must correspondingly
modify the mind’s relations with external reality. Where
the body is maladjusted and under strain, the mind’s
relations, sensory, emotional, intellectual, conative, with
external reality are likely to be unsatisfactory. And the
same would seem to be true of the mind’s relations with
what may be called internal reality — with that more-than-
self which, if we choose, we can discover within us and
which the mystics have identified with God, the Law, the
Light, the integrating principle of the world. All the
Eastern mystics are insistent on the necessity of bodily
health. A sick man cannot attain enlightenment. They

220

EDUCATION

further point out that it is very difficult for a man to acquire
the art of contemplation unless he observes certain rules
of diet and adopts certain bodily postures. Similar
observations have been made by Christian mystics in the
West. For example, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing
insists, in a very striking and curious passage which I
shall quote in a later chapter, that enlightenment, or mystical
union with God, is unattainable by those who are physically
uncontrolled to the extent of fidgeting, nervously laughing,
making odd gestures and grimaces. Such tics and com¬
pulsions (it is a matter of observation) are almost invariably
associated with physical maladjustment and strain. Where
they exist, the highest forms of non-attachment are un¬
achievable. It follows therefore that the ideal system of
physical education must be one which relieves people of
maladjustment and strain.

Another condition of non-attachment is awareness.
Unawareness is one of the main sources of attachment
or evil. ‘Forgive them, for they know not what they do/
Those who know not what they do are indeed in need of
forgiveness; for they are responsible for an immense
amount of suffering. Yet more urgent than their need to
be forgiven is their need to know. For if they knew, it
may be that they would not perform those stupid and
criminal acts whose ineluctable consequences no amount of
human or divine forgiveness can prevent. A good physical
education should teach awareness on the physical plane —
not the obsessive and unwished-for awareness that pain
imposes upon the mind, but voluntary and intentional
awareness. The body must be trained to think. True,
this happens every time we learn a manual skill; our
bodies think when we draw, or play golf, or take a piano
lesson. But all such thinking is specialist thinking. What
we need is an education for our bodies that shall be, on
the bodily plane, liberal and not merely technical and

221

ENDS AND MEANS

narrowly specific. The awareness that our bodies need
is the knowledge of some general principle of right
integration, and along with it, a knowledge of the proper
way to apply that principle in every phase of physical
activity.

There can be no non-attachment without inhibition.
When the state of non-attachment has become ‘a second
nature/ inhibition will doubtless no longer be necessary;
for impulses requiring inhibition will not arise. Those in
whom non-attachment is a permanent state are few. For
everyone else, such impulses requiring inhibition arise with
a distressing frequency. The technique of inhibition needs
to be learnt on all the planes of our being. On the intel¬
lectual plane — for we cannot hope to think intelligently or
to practise the simplest form of ‘recollection’ unless we
learn to inhibit irrelevant thoughts. On the emotional
plane — for we shall never reach even the lowest degree of
non-attachment unless we can check as they arise the
constant movements of malice and vanity, of lust and
sloth, of avarice, anger and fear. On the physical plane —
for if we are maladjusted (as most of us are in the circum¬
stances of modem urban life), we cannot expect to achieve
integration unless we inhibit our tendency to perform
actions in the, to us, familiar, maladjusted way. Mind and
body are organically one; and it is therefore inherently
likely that, if we can learn the art of conscious inhibition
on the physical level, it will help us to acquire and practise
the same art on the emotional and intellectual levels. What
is needed is a practical morality working at every level from
the bodily to the intellectual. A good physical education
will be one which supplies the body with just such a
practical morality. It will be a curative morality, a morality
of inhibitions and conscious control, and at the same time,
by promoting health and proper physical integration, it
will be a system of what I have called preventive ethics,

w.

EDUCATION

forestalling many kinds of trouble by never giving them
the opportunity to arise.

So far as I am aware, the only system of physical
education which fulfils all these conditions is the system
developed by F. M. Alexander. Mr. Alexander has given
a full account of his system in three books, each of which
is prefaced by Professor John Dewey.1 It is therefore
unnecessary for me to describe it here — all the more so
as no verbal description can do justice to a technique which
involves the changing, by a long process of instruction on
the part of the teacher and of active co-operation on that
of the pupil, of an individual’s sensory experiences. One
cannot describe the experience of seeing the colour, red.
Similarly one cannot describe the much more complex
experience of improved physical co-ordination. A verbal
description would mean something only to a person who
had actually had the experience described; to the mal-
co-ordinated person, the same words would mean some¬
thing quite different. Inevitably, he would interpret them
in terms of his own sensory experiences, which are those
of a mal-co-ordinated person. Complete understanding of
the system can come only with the practice of it. All I
need say in this place is that I am sure, as a matter of *
personal experience and observation, that it gives us all the
things we have been looking for in a system of physical
education: relief from strain due to maladjustment, and
consequent improvement in physical and mental health;
increased consciousness of the physical means employed
to gain the ends proposed by the will and, along with this,
a general heightening of consciousness on all levels; a
technique of inhibition, working on the physical level to
prevent the body from slipping back, under the influence
of greedy ‘end-gaining,’ into its old habits of mal-

1 Man's Supreme Inheritance, Creative Conscious Control, and The
Use of the Self

223

ENDS AND MEANS

co-ordination, and working (by a kind of organic analogy)
to inhibit undesirable impulses and irrelevance on the
emotional and intellectual levels respectively. We cannot
ask more from any system of physical education; nor, if
we seriously desire to alter human beings in a desirable
direction, can we ask any less.

224

Chapter XIII

RELIGIOUS PRACTICES

RELIGION is, among many other things, a system of
education, by means of which human beings may
train themselves, first, to make desirable changes in their
own personalities and, at one remove, in society, and, in
the second place, to heighten consciousness and so establish
more adequate relations between themselves and the
universe of which they are parts.

Religion is this, I repeat, among many other things.
For, alas, by no means all the doctrines and practices of
the existing religions are calculated to ameliorate character
or heighten consciousness. On the contrary, a great deal
of what is taught and done in the name of even the most
highly evolved religions is definitely pernicious, and a
great deal more is ethically neutral — not particularly bad,
but, on the other hand, not particularly good. Towards
the kind of religion whose fruits are moral evil and a
darkening of the mind the rational idealist can only show
an uncompromising hostility. Such things as persecution
and the suppression or distortion of truth are intrinsically
wrong, and he can have nothing to do with religious
organizations which countenance such iniquities.

His attitude towards the ethically neutral customs, rites
and ceremonies of organized religion will be determined
exclusively by the nature of their effects. If such things
help to maintain a satisfactory social pattern, if they serve
to facilitate and enrich the relations between man and man,
between group and group, then he will accord them a
P 225

ENDS AND MEANS

certain qualified favour. True, he may recognize very
clearly that such practices do not help men to attain to
the highest forms of human development, but are actually
impediments in the path. The Buddha put down ritualism
as one of the Ten Fetters which bind men to illusion and
prevent them from attaining enlightenment. Nevertheless,
in view of the fact that most individuals will certainly not
wish to attain enlightenment — in other words, develop
themselves to the limits of human capacity — there may be
something to be said in favour of ritualism. Attachment
to traditional ceremonials and belief in the magical efficacy
of ritual may prevent men from attaining to enlightenment;
but, on the other hand, they may help such individuals as
have neither the desire nor the capacity for enlightenment
to behave a little better than they otherwise would have
done.

It is impossible to discuss the value of rites and symbolic
ceremonials without reopening a question already touched
upon in the chapters on Inequality and Education: the
question of psychological types and degrees of mental
development. Significantly enough, most of the historical
founders of religions and a majority of religious philosophers
have been in agreement upon this matter. They have
divided human beings into a minority of individuals,
capable of making the efforts required to ‘attain enlighten¬
ment,’ and a great majority incapable of making such
efforts. This conception is fundamental in Hinduism,
Buddhism and, in general, all Indian philosophy. It is
implicit in the teaching of Lao Tsu, and again in that of
the Stoics. Jesus of Nazareth taught that ‘many are
called, but few are chosen’ and that there were certain
people who constituted ‘the salt of the earth’ and who
were therefore able to preserve the world, to prevent it
from decaying. The Gnostic sects believed in the existence
of esoteric and exoteric teaching, the latter reserved for

226

RELIGIOUS PRACTICES

the many, the former for the few who were capable of
profiting by them. The Catholic Church exterminated
the Gnostics, but proceeded to organize itself as though
■ the Gnostic belief in esoteric and exoteric teachings were
true.1 For the vulgar it provided ceremonial, magically
compulsive formulas, the worship of images, a calendar of
holy days. To the few it taught, through the mouth of
the mystics, that such external ‘aids to devotion* were
(as Buddha had pointed out many centuries before) strong
fetters holding men back from enlightenment or, in Christian
phraseology, from communion with God. In practice,
Christianity, like Hinduism or Buddhism, is not one
religion, but several religions, adapted to the needs of
different types of human beings. A Christian church in
Southern Spain, or Mexico, or Sicily, is singularly like a
Hindu temple. The eye is delighted by the same gaudy
colours, the same tripe-like decorations, the same gesticu¬
lating stames; the nose inhales the same intoxicating
smells; the ear and, along with it, the understanding, are
lulled by the drone of the same incomprehensible incanta¬
tions, roused by the same loud, impressive music. At the
other end of the scale, consider the chapel of a Cistercian
monastery and the meditation hall of a community of
Zen Buddhists. They are equally bare; aids to devotion
(in other words, fetters holing back the soul from en¬
lightenment) are conspicuously absent from either building.
Here are two distinct religions for two distinct kinds of
human beings.

The history of ideas is to a great extent the history of
the misinterpretation of ideas. An outstanding individual
makes a record of his life or formulates, in the light of
his personal experience, a theory about the nature of the
world. Other individuals, not possessing his natural

1 One of the charges levelled by the Inquisition against Eckhart
was that he had spoken openly to the people of holy mysteries.

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ENDS AND MEANS

endowments, read what he has written, and, because their
psychological make-up is different from that of the author,
fail to understand what he means. They re-interpret his
words in the light of their own experience, their own
knowledge, their own prejudices. Consequently, they
learn from their teacher, not to be like him, but to be
more themselves. Misunderstood, his words serve to
justify their desires, rationalize their beliefs. Not all of
the magic, the liturgy, the ritual existing in the historical
religions is a survival from a more primitive age. A good
part of it, it is probable, is relatively new — the product of
misunderstanding. Mystical writers recording psycho¬
logical experiences in symbolical language were often
supposed by the non-mystics to be talking about alchemy
or magic rites. Episodes in the inner life were projected,
in a strangely distorted form, into the outer world, where
they helped to swell the majestic stream of primitive
superstition. There is a danger that the present wide¬
spread interest in oriental psychology and philosophy
may lead, through misunderstanding, to a recrudescence
of the grossest forms of superstition.

To what extent can rites and formularies, symbolic acts
and objects be made use of in modem times ? The question
has been asked at frequent intervals ever since organized
Christianity began to lose its hold upon the West. Attempts
have been made to fabricate synthetic rituals without much
success. The French Revolutionary cult of Reason and
the Supreme Being died with the Thermidorian reaction.
Comte’s religion of Humanity — ‘Catholicism without
Christianity,’ as T. H. Huxley called it — never took root.
Even the rituals and ceremonies devised from time to time
by successful Christian revivalists seldom outlive their
authors or spread beyond the buildings in which they
were originally practised.

On the other hand, new rituals and ceremonials have

228

RELIGIOUS PRACTICES

sprung up in connection with the cults of nationalism and
socialism — have sprung up and continued to flourish over
a long period of years.

Considering these instances, let us risk a few generaliza¬
tions. Ritual and ceremonial will arise almost spontaneously
wherever masses of people are gathered together for the
purpose of taking part in any activity in which they are
emotionally concerned. Such rites and ceremonials will
survive and develop for just so long as the emotional
concern is felt. It is impossible to persuade people who
are not emotionally concerned in any given idea, or person,
to make a habit of performing rites and ceremonies in
connection with that idea or person. To create a ritual,
as Comte did, in the hope that it will create a religious
emotion, is to put the cart before the horse. Where the
emotional concern exists, ritual will serve to strengthen it,
even to revive it when enthusiasm grows weary; but it
cannot create emotion. (To be more accurate, it cannot
create a lasting sentiment. A ceremony well performed is
a work of art from which even the sceptical spectator may
‘get a kick/ But one can be deeply moved by Macbeth
without being converted to a permanent belief in witch¬
craft — can be stirred by a Papal Mass or a review of
Brownshirts without feeling impelled to become a Catholic
or a Nazi.)

At the present time and in the industrialized West, there
is not very much to be said in favour of the rites, customs
and ceremonies of traditional Christianity. There is not
much to be said for them, for the simple reason that they
are demonstrably very ineffective. They do absolutely
nothing to hold together the social pattern of Christendom,
and they have proved themselves incapable of standing up
to the competition of the new rites and ceremonies of
nationalistic idolatry. Men are much more German or
imperialistically British than Protestant, much more French

229

ENDS AND MEANS

or Fascist than Catholic. In the past, the fetters of Christian
ritualism may have held people back from enlightenment;
but these fetters did at least serve as strong ties binding
individuals to the body of Christian society. To-day they
have, to a great extent, outlived this social function.
Indeed, it would be almost true to say that preoccupation
with traditional religious rites and ceremonies is some¬
thing which actually separates people from the society in
the midst of which they live. There are only too many
men and women who think that, if they have scrupulously
repeated the prescribed phrases, made the proper gestures
and observed the traditional taboos, they are excused
from bothering about anything else. For these people,
the performance of traditional custom has become a sub¬
stitute for moral effort and intelligence. They fly from
the problems of real life into symbolical ceremonial; they
neglect their duties towards themselves, their neighbours
and their God in order to give idolatrous worship to some
traditionally hallowed object, to play liturgical charades
or go through some piece of ancient mummery. Let me
cite a recent example of this. In the early autumn of 1936
the London Times recorded the fact that, in deference to
religious sentiment, flying-boats were henceforward not to
be allowed to come down on the Sea of Galilee. This is
a characteristic instance of the way in which preoccupation
with sacred objects acts as a fetter holding men back, not
only from personal enlightenment, but even from a rational
consideration of the facts of contemporary reality. Here
is a ‘religious sentiment’ which feels itself deeply offended
if flying machines settle on a certain hallowed sheet of
water, but which (to judge by the published utterances of
Anglican deans and bishops) does not find anything
specially shocking in the thought that these same flying
machines may be used to drop fire, poison and high-
explosives upon the inhabitants of unfortified towns. If

230

RELIGIOUS PRACTICES

this is religion, then God deliver us from such criminal
imbecility.

For the rational idealist, what is the moral of the pre¬
ceding paragraphs, what the practical lesson to be drawn
from a consideration of the nature of religious rites and
ceremonies? He will conclude, first of all, that, ritualism
being a fetter to which a great many human beings are
firmly attached, it is useless to try to get rid of it. Next,
observing that rites and ceremonies may be used, like any
other instrument, for evil purposes no less effectively than
for good, he will do all in his power to encourage their
use for good purposes and, whether by argument, per¬
suasion or satire, to prevent them from being used to
further causes that are evil. Finally, taking warning from
the failures of the past, he will not waste his time in
fabricating new ceremonials for any movement in which its
participants are not already emotionally concerned.

So much for the positively mischievous and the ethically
neutral aspects of religion. Let us now consider those
elements in religious practice and belief which have a
positive value.

All systems of classification tend in some measure to
distort reality; but it is impossible to think clearly about
reality unless we make use of some classificatory system.
At the risk, then, of over-simplifying the facts, I shall
classify the varieties of religious practice and religious
belief under a number of separate heads.

The present chapter treats solely of existing religious
practices (not of beliefs), and treats them predominantly
from a humanistic point of view. From the humanistic
point of view, religious practices are valuable in so far as
they provide methods of self-education, methods which
men can use to transform their characters and enlarge
their consciousness.

The methods of which we know the least in the con-

231

ENDS AND MEANS

temporary West are those which I will call the physiological
methods. These physiological methods may be classified
under a few main headings, as follows.

Most savage peoples and even certain devotees of the
higher religions make use of repeated rhythmical move¬
ment as a method of inducing unusual states of mind.
This rhythmic movement may take almost any form,
from the solitary back-and-forward pacing of the Catholic
priest reading his breviary, to the elaborate ritual dances
of primitives all over the world. The repetition of
rhythmical movement seems to have much the same effects
as the repetition of verbal formulas or phrases of music:
It lulls to rest the superficial part of the consciousness and
leaves the deeper mind free either to concentrate on
ultimate reality (as in the case of the solitary priest, pacing
up and down with his breviary), or to experience a profound
sense of solidarity with other human beings and with the
presiding divinity (as happens in the case of ritual dancers).
Christianity, it would seem, made a great mistake when it
allowed the dance to become completely secularized. For
men and women of somatotonic type, ritual dances provide
a religious experience that seems more satisfying and con¬
vincing than any other.

Another physiological method is that of asceticism.
Fasting, sleeplessness, discomfort and self-inflicted pain
have been used by devotees of every religion as methods,
not only of atoning for sin, but also of schooling the will
and modifying the ordinary, everyday consciousness.

This last is also the aim of those Indian ascetics who
train their bodies systematically, until they are able to
exercise conscious control over physiological processes
that are normally carried out unconsciously. In many
cases they go on to produce unusual mental states by the
systematic and profound modification of certain bodily
functions , such as respiration and the sexual act.

232

RELIGIOUS PRACTICES
There is good evidence to show that such practices may
produce very valuable results. It is possible for a man
who employs the methods of mortification or of Yoga to
achieve a high degree of non-attachment to ‘the things of
this world’ and at the same time so to heighten his con¬
sciousness that he can attach himself more completely than
the normal man to that which is greater than himself, to
the integrating principle of all being. It is possible, I
repeat; but it is not easy. All those who know anything
about the methods of mortification and of Yoga, whether
as observers or by personal experience, agree that they
are dangerous methods. To begin with, they are physio¬
logically dangerous; many bodies break down under the
strain imposed upon them. But this is not all; there is
also a moral danger. Of those who undertake such
methods, only a few are ready to do so for the right
reason. Ascetics easily degenerate into record-breakers.
There is little to choose between Simeon the Stylite and
modem American pole-sitters, or between a fakir on his
bed of nails and the self-tormenting competitors in a
dancing Marathon. Vanity and the craving for pre¬
eminence, for distinction, for public recognition figure
only too frequently among the motives of the ascetics.
Moreover, in all but the most highly trained individuals,
physical pain tends to heighten, rather than allay, the
normal preoccupation with the body. A man in pain has
the greatest difficulty in not identifying himself with the
afflicted organ. (The same, of course, is equally true of a
man experiencing intense pleasure.) A few ascetics may
be able so to school their minds that they can ignore their
pain and identify themselves with that which is more than
the pain and more than the totality of their personal being.
Many, on the contrary, will end up as diminished beings,
identified with their pain and with their pride in being
able to stand so much of it.

233

ENDS AND MEANS

The danger inherent in the practice of methods of
conscious physiological control is of a somewhat different
kind. The methods of Hatha Yoga, as they are called in
India, are said to result in heightened mental and physical
powers. (Arthur Avalon gives much interesting infor¬
mation on this subject in his Kundalini.1) It is for the
sake solely of enjoying these powers, and not in order to
use them as a means to ‘enlightenment,’ that many adepts
of Hatha Yoga undertake their training. Pride and sen¬
suality are their motives, and the heightened ability to
dominate and to enjoy are their rewards. Such people
emerge from their training, possessed, indeed, of heightened
powers, but of heightened powers that are the instruments
of a character that has grown worse instead of better.

Acting, as he must, on the principle that the tree is
known by its fruits, the rational idealist will avoid all
methods of religious self-education involving extreme
asceticism or the profound modification of physiological
functions — will go on avoiding them until such time as
increased scientific knowledge permits of their being used
more safely than is possible at present. Meanwhile, of
course, he will not neglect any system of training which
promises to increase, without danger, the individual’s
conscious control of his organism. (This matter has
been discussed in some detail at the end of the chapter on
Education.)

The second method of self-education taught by the
various religions consists essentially in the cultivation of
an intimate emotional relationship between the worshipper
and a personal God or other divine being. This emotional
method is the one of which the West knows most; for it
is the method used by the majority of Christians. In India
it is known as bhakti-marga , the path of devotional faith,
as opposed to karma-marga , the path of duty or works,
1 See also Dr. K. Behanan’s Yoga (New York, 1937).

234

RELIGIOUS PRACTICES

and jnana-marga, the path of knowledge. Bhakti-marga
played a relatively small part in Indian religion — at any
rate in the religion of the educated classes — until the
coming of the Bhagavata reformation of the Middle Ages.
Revolting against the pantheism of the Vedanta and the
atheism of the Sankhya philosophy and of Buddhism, the
leaders of the Bhagavata reformation insisted on the
personal nature of God and the eternally personal existence
of individual souls. (There is reason to believe that
Christian influences were at work on the reformers.) A
kind of bhakti-marga crept into Buddhism with the rise
of the Greater Vehicle. In this case, however, theologians
were careful to insist that the objects of Bhakti, the Buddhas,
were not eternal gods and that the ultimate reality, sub¬
stantial to the world, was impersonal.

I have said that for people of predominantly somatotonic
type, rituals involving rhythmical movement provide a
particularly satisfying form of religious experience. It is
with their muscles that they most easily obtain knowledge
of the divine. Similarly, in people of viscerotonic habit
religious experience tends naturally to take an emotional
form. But it is difficult to have an emotional relation
except with a person; the viscerotonic tend, therefore, to
rationalize their temperamental preferences in terms of a
personalistic theology. Their direct intuition, they might
say, is of a personal God. But here a very significant
fact comes to light (it is discussed at length in the next
chapter and need only be mentioned here). Those who
take the trouble to train themselves in the arduous technique
of mysticism always end, if they go far enough in their
work of recollection and meditation, by losing their
intuitions of a personal God and having direct experience
of an ultimate reality that is impersonal. The experience
of the great mystics of every age and country is there to
prove that the theology associated with bhakti-marga is

235

ENDS AND MEANS

inadequate, that it misrepresents the nature of ultimate
reality. Those who persist in having emotional relation¬
ships with a God whom they believe to be personal are
people who have never troubled to undertake the arduous
training which alone makes possible the mystical union of
the soul with the integrating principle of all being. To
viscerotonics, with a craving for emotional experience, as
also to somatotonics, with a craving for muscular ex¬
perience, such training must seem particularly arduous.
Indeed, the genuine mystical intuition may be an experience
which it is all but impossible for many people belonging
to these psycho-physiological types ever to have. Be that
as it may, the fact remains that such people generally
choose the types of religious experience they find most
agreeable and easiest to have.

The theology of bhakti-marga may be untrue; but it
often produces very considerable results with great rapidity.
In other words, the emotional method of religious self-
education is demonstrably effective. It should be remarked,
however, that the emotional method of secular self-
education is no less effective. In his volume, God or Man,
Professor Leuba has pointed out that startling conversions
can take place without the question of religion ever arising;
that the imitation of admired human models can produce
desirable changes of character no less effectively than the
imitation of divine models. The trouble with bhakti-marga
is that it is really too effective by half. Devotion to any
object of worship, however intrinsically grotesque or even
evil, is capable of producing great changes in the character
of the devotees — changes that, up to a point, are genuine
ameliorations. Those who have followed the contemporary
American cult of the negro man-god, Father Divine, must
have been struck by the fact that many, probably most, of
Father’s worshippers have undergone a striking ‘change of
heart’ and are in many respects better men and women

236

RELIGIOUS PRACTICES

than they were before their conversion to Divinism.1
But this improvement of character has very definite limita¬
tions. Divinists are committed by their theology to a
belief in the perfection of Father. The commands of a
perfect being should be obeyed. And, in fact, they are
obeyed, even when — and this would seem to be the case
in certain of the new church’s financial transactions — they
are not in accord with the highest principles of morality.
The abnormal is worthy of study because of the light it
throws upon the normal. Divinism is a kind of fantastic
parody of a religion of personal devotion; but just because
it is a parody, it exhibits very clearly the dangers and
defects, as well as the virtues, of bhakti-marga. Bhakti
towards Father produced excellent results for just so long
as Father himself behaved with perfect virtue, or as his
followers attributed perfect virtue to him. The moment
he ceased to be virtuous, or the moment non-virtuous
actions were attributed to him under the mistaken belief
that they were virtuous, the devotion of his followers
ceased to be an influence for good in their lives and became
an influence for evil. It is obvious that the obedient
devotees or imitators of a person who either is, or is
believed to be in some way evil, cannot themselves be
wholly good.

What applies to the worship of Father Divine, applies,
mutatis mutandis , to all other forms of bhakti-marga.
Devotion to, and imitation of, a personal divinity provide
worshippers with more energy to change themselves and
the world around them than any other form of religious
self-education. This is an empirical fact. Now, energy is
a good thing provided it be well directed. Devotion to a
personal deity produces a great deal of energy; does it
also give a satisfactory direction to the energy produced?

1 See The Incredible Messiah , by Robert Allerton Parker (New
York, 1937).

237

ENDS AND MEANS

A study of history shows that the results of worshipping
a personality are by no means necessarily good. Indeed,
the energy developed by devotion to a person has been
directed to undesirable ends almost as often as to desirable
ones. That this should be so is, in the very nature of the
case, only to be expected. Devotion to a human person
who is still alive, but who has been deified by general
acclaim, can hardly fail to be disastrous in the long run.
Bhakti-marga in regard to an Alexander the Great, a
Napoleon, a Hitler may begin by producing certain desir¬
able changes in the worshippers; but it cannot fail to
produce degenerative changes in the person worshipped.
‘Power always corrupts,’ wrote Lord Acton. ‘Absolute
power absolutely corrupts. All great men are bad.’ A
deified man is morally ruined by the process of being
worshipped. Those who adoringly obey and imitate him
are making it inevitable, by their very adoration, that
they shall obey and imitate a thoroughly bad, corrupted
person.

In cases where the adored man is no longer alive,
adoration cannot corrupt its object. But even the best
human persons have their defects and limitations; and to
these, if they happen to be dead, must be added the defects
and limitations of their biographers. Thus, according to
his very inadequate biographers, Jesus of Nazareth was
never preoccupied with philosophy, art, music, or science,
and ignored almost completely the problems of politics,
economics and sexual relations. It is also recorded of
him that he blasted a fig-tree for not bearing fruit out of
season, that he scourged the shopkeepers in the temple
precincts and caused a herd of swine to drown. Scrupu¬
lous devotion to and imitation of the person of Jesus have
resulted only too frequently in a fatal tendency, on the
part of earnest Christians, to despise artistic creation and
philosophic thought; to disparage the enquiring intelli-

238

RELIGIOUS PRACTICES

gence, to evade all long-range, large-scale problems of
politics and economics, and to believe themselves justified
in displaying anger, or, as they would doubtless prefer to
call it, ‘righteous indignation.’

In many cases devotion is directed, not to a living
human person, nor to a human person who lived in the
past, but to an eternal, omniscient, all-powerful God, who
is regarded as being in some way a person. Even in this
case bhakti-marga is apt to lead to unsatisfactory results.
The theologians are at great pains to insist that the personal
God is an absolutely perfect person; but, in spite of all
their precautions, the deity tends to be thought of by his
adorers as being like the only kind of person of whom
they have direct knowledge — that is to say, the human
individual. This natural tendency to conceive of a personal
God as a being similar to a human person is especially
prevalent among Christians brought up on the Old
Testament. In this remarkable compendium of Bronze-
Age literature, God is personal to the point of being
almost sub-human. Too often the believer has felt justified
in giving way to his worst passions by the reflection that,
in doing so, he is basing his conduct on that of a God
who feels jealousy and hatred, cannot control his rage and
behaves in general like a particularly ferocious oriental
tyrant. The frequency with which men have identified
the prompting of their own passions with the voice of an
all-too-personal God is really appalling. The history of
those sects which have believed that individuals could
base their conduct upon the moment-to-moment guidance
of a personal deity makes most depressing reading. From
Thomas Schucker, the Swiss Anabaptist, who was divinely
guided to cut off his brother’s head, and who actually did
so in the sight of a large audience, including his own
father and mother, down to Smyth-Pigott, who believed
that he was God and who fathered upon the parlour-maid

239

ENDS AND MEANS

two illegitimate children called respectively Power and
Glory — the long succession of divinely justified cranks and
lunatics and criminals comes marching down through
history into the present time. Belief in a personal God
has released an enormous amount of energy directed
towards good ends; but it has probably released an equal
amount of energy directed towards ends that were silly,
or mad, or downright evil. It has also led to that enormous
over-valuation of the individual ego, which is so charac¬
teristic of Western popular philosophy. All the great
religions have taught the necessity of transcending per¬
sonality; but the Christians have made it particularly
difficult for themselves to act upon this teaching. They
have accompanied the injunction that men should lose
their lives in order to save them by the assertion that
God himself is a person and that personal values are the
highest that we can know.

A personal deity tends to be regarded as completely
transcendent, as somebody out there , apart from the per¬
cipient and different from him. At various times in the
history of Christendom, thinkers have insisted with par¬
ticular emphasis upon the incommensurable otherness of
God. Augustine, Calvin, Kierkegaard and, in our own
day, Barth have dwelt emphatically and at length upon
this theme. The doctrine of the complete transcendence
and otherness of God is probably untrue and its results
in the lives of those who believed it have always been
extremely undesirable. God being completely other is
regarded as being capable of anything — even (in Kierke¬
gaard’s phrase) of the most monstrous ‘teleological sus¬
pensions of morality.’ Again, belief in the otherness of
God entails belief that grace alone is effective in procuring
salvation and that works and a systematic cultivation of the
inner life are useless. There is nothing fortuitous in the
fact that the first and most ruthless capitalists were men

240

RELIGIOUS PRACTICES

brought up in the tradition of Calvinism. Believing that
good works and the inner life were without any eternal
significance, they gave up charity and self-education and
turned all their attention to getting on in the world.
Borrowing from the Old Testament the sordid doctrine
that virtue deserves a material reward, they were able to
amass wealth and oppress the poor with a thoroughly
good conscience; their wealth, they were convinced, was
a sign of God’s favour, the other fellow’s poverty, of
moral turpitude.

It would be possible to multiply such instances of the
disastrous practical effects of wrong metaphysical beliefs.
‘All that we are,’ writes the author of the Dhammapada ,
‘is the result of what we have thought.’ If we think
wrongly, our being and our actions will be unsatisfactory.
Thus, the Aztecs believed that the sun was a living person
who required for his food the blood of human victims.
If the blood were not provided in sufficient quantities, the
sun would die and all life on the earth would come to an
end. Therefore the Aztecs had to devote a great part of
their energy to making war in order that they might have
enough prisoners to satisfy the sun’s appetite.

Another case. In the basement of the London Museum
there hangs a broadsheet describing the trial in the late
eighteen-thirties of two men who had been accused of
homosexual practices. Condemning them, the judge
pointed out that, by their crime, these two men were
gravely endangering their country. Sodom had been
destroyed because of sodomy. There was every reason
to suppose that, if homosexuality were allowed to flourish
there, London would suffer the same fate. It followed
therefore that the two delinquents richly deserved their
death. Accordingly it was ordered that they should be
hanged — on a different scaffold from that on which the other
criminals were executed, lest by their presence they should
Q 241

ENDS AND MEANS

somehow contaminate the relatively innocent murderers,
coiners and housebreakers condemned at the same assize.

Yet another instance. Hitlerian theology affirms that
there is a Nordic race, inherently superior to all others.
Hence it is right that Nordics should organize themselves
for conquest and should do their best to exterminate
people like the Jews, who are members of inferior races.

It is worth remarking that, in all these cases, the pre¬
siding deity was personal. For the Aztecs the sun was a
person, capable of feeling hunger for blood. The God,
who, it was feared, would destroy London because of the
sexual eccentricities of its male inhabitants, was the all-too-
personal God of the Old Testament. Hitler’s God is a
rejuvenated version of the Kaiser’s ‘old German God’ —
a divine person deeply concerned in the fate of Bismarck’s
empire and ready to fight on the side of its armies, as
Athena fought on the side of the Greeks. Theological
beliefs leading to undesirable conduct need not necessarily
be associated with the dogma of the personality of God.
But as a matter of historical fact, the more eccentric
theological errors have very often been associated with a
belief in God’s personality. This is only natural. A
person has passions and caprices; and it is therefore
natural that he should do odd things — clamour for the
hearts of sacrificial victims, demand the persecution of the
Jews, threaten destruction to whole cities because a few of
their inhabitants happen to be homosexuals.

The dangers of bhakti-marga are manifest; but un¬
fortunately the fact that its results are often pernicious
does nothing to lessen its attractiveness to human beings
of a certain psychological type. Many people enjoy the
actual process of bhakti-marga too much to be able to pay
any attention to its effects on themselves and on society
at large. History shows that, where the emotional method
has once taken root, it tends to remain in possession of

242

RELIGIOUS PRACTICES

the field. I have already mentioned the Bhagavata refor¬
mation which so profoundly changed the nature of Indian
religion during the Middle Ages. To this day bhakti-
marga retains the popularity it won between the twelfth
and the fifteenth centuries. Japanese Buddhism, as readers
of The Tale of Genji will recall, had become in Lady
Murasaki’s day (at the beginning of the eleventh century)
predominantly a religion of personal devotion. ‘The
Indian founder of Buddhism,’ to quote Professor Geden,
‘was hardly more than a figure and a name.’ Sakyamuni’s
religion, a combination of karma-marga with jnana-marga ,
had been replaced by bhakti-marga directed towards Amida
Buddha. ‘A reform movement was initiated in Japan in
the thirteenth century, the object of which was to reinstate
Sakyamuni in the supreme place. It proved, however, an
entire failure.’ The way of devotion seemed more agree¬
able to the Japanese than the ways of knowledge and duty.

In Christianity bhakti towards a personal being has
always been the most popular form of religious practice.
Up to the time of the Counter-Reformation, however, the
way of knowledge (‘mystical theology’ as it is called in
Christian language) was accorded an honourable place
beside the way of devotion. From the middle of the
sixteenth century onwards the way of knowledge came to
be neglected and even condemned. We are told by
Dom John Chapman that ‘Mercurian, who was general
of the society (of Jesus) from 1573 to 1580*, forbade the
use of the works of Tauler, Ruysbroeck, Suso, Harphius,
St. Gertrude, and St. Mechtilde.’ Every effort was made
by the Counter-Reformers to heighten the worshipper’s
devotion to a personal divinity. The literary content of
baroque art is hysterical, almost epileptic, in the violence
of its emotionality. It even becomes necessary to call in
physiology as an aid to feeling. The ecstasies of the
saints are represented by seventeenth-century artists as

243

ENDS AND MEANS

being frankly sexual. Seventeenth-century drapery writhes
like so much tripe. In the equivocal personage of Margaret
Mary Alacocque, seventeenth-century piety pores over a
bleeding and palpitating heart. From this orgy of emotion¬
alism and sensationalism Catholic Christianity seems never
completely to have recovered.

The significance of bhakti in its relation to cosmological
belief is discussed in the next chapter. Our business
here is only with its psychological and social aspects.
Its results, as we have already seen, are generally good
up to a certain point, but bad beyond that point.
Nevertheless, bhakti is so enjoyable, especially to people
of viscerotonic habit, that it is bound to survive. In our
own day a majority of Europeans find it intellectually
impossible to pay devotion to the supernatural persons
who were the objects of worship during the Counter-
Reformation period. But the desire to worship persists,
the process of worshipping still retains its attraction. The
masses continue to tread the path of devotion; but the
objects of this bhakti are no longer saints and a personal
God; they are the personified nation or class, and the
deified Leader. The change is wholly for the worse.

It is clear that, given the existence of viscerotonic and
somatotonic types, religious practices of the emotional and
physiological kind will always be popular. Physiological
practices can adapt themselves to almost any sort of belief.
The emotional method, on the other hand, inevitably
imposes upon those who practise it a personalistic theology.
Those who enjoy bhakti can never be persuaded to give
up their pleasurable practices and the belief correlated
with them. In these circumstances, what is the rational
idealist to do? So far as I can see, he has two main tasks.
He must do his best to advertise the fact that the physio¬
logical and the emotional are not the only methods of
religious self-education, and especially that there is an

2 44

RELIGIOUS PRACTICES

alternative to bhakti and the almost certainly false beliefs
with which bhakti is always associated. Owing to the
disparagement during recent centuries of mystical theology,
or the way of knowledge, many religiously minded
Europeans are not even aware that an alternative to bhakti
exists. The existence of that alternative must be pro¬
claimed and its practical uses and cosmological implications
set forth. The second task before the rational idealist is
the harder of the two. Accepting as inevitable the con¬
tinued existence of a large residuum of practisers of
bhakd-marga , he will have to do all in his power to turn
this irrepressible stream of bhakti into the channels in
which it will do the least mischief. For example, it is
manifest that bhakti directed towards deified leaders and
personified nations, classes or parties must result in evil,
not only for society, but ultimately (whatever the im¬
mediate good effects in regard to the minor virtues) for the
individual as well. To repeat this obvious fact in and out
of season is perhaps the most wearisome but also the most
necessary of the tasks which the rational idealist must
undertake. Towards the transcendental religions his atti¬
tude should be discriminatingly critical. The point that
he must always remember and of which he must remind
the world is that, whenever God is thought of, in
Aristotle’s phrase, as the commander-in-chief rather than
as the order of the army — as a transcendent person rather
than as an immanent-and-also-transcendent principle of
integration — persecution always tends to arise. It is an
extremely significant fact that, before the coming of the
Mohammedans, there was virtually no persecution in India.
The Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Tsiang, who visited India in
the first half of the seventh century and has left a circum¬
stantial account of his fourteen-year stay in the country,
makes it clear that Hindus and Buddhists lived side by
side without any show of violence. Each party attempted

245

ENDS AND MEANS

the conversion of the other; but the methods used were
those of persuasion and argument, not those of force.
Neither Hinduism nor Buddhism is disgraced by any¬
thing corresponding to the Inquisition; neither was ever
guilty of such iniquities as the Albigensian crusade or such
criminal lunacies as the religious wars of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. The Moslems who invaded India
brought with them the idea of a God who was not the
order of the army of being, but its general. Bkakti towards
this despotic person was associated with wholesale slaughter
of Buddhists and Hindus. Similarly bhaktt towards the
personal God of Christianity has been associated, through¬
out the history of that religion, with the wholesale slaughter
of pagans and the retail torture and murder of heretics.
It is the business of the rational idealist to harp continually
upon this all-important fact. In this way, perhaps, he may
be able to mitigate the evil tendencies which history shows
to be inherent in the way of devotion and the correlated
belief in a personal deity.

It has been necessary to dwell at considerable length on
the subject of the emotional method of religious self-
education, for the good reason that this method possessed,
and still possesses, very great historical importance. To
the third method of religious self-education, the method
of meditation, I must also devote a good deal of space.
It is important not only historically, because of its influence
on the affairs of men, but also metaphysically, because of
the light it throws on the nature of ultimate reality. With
its metaphysical significance I shall deal in the next chapter.
In this place I am concerned mainly with the social and
psychological results of the methods.1

1 For further information on the subject consult A. Tillyard,
Religious Exercises; Bede Frost, The Art of Mental Prayer; and the
anonymous Concentration and Meditation , published by the Buddhist

'Lodge, London. All these contain bibliographies.

246

RELIGIOUS PRACTICES
The method of meditation has often been used in con¬
junction with the emotional and physiological methods.
In its purest form, however, it would seem to be quite
independent of either. It is possible for meditation to be
practised by those who are neither extreme ascetics nor
Hatha-Yogis, and also by those who do not believe in a
personal God. Indeed, it might even be argued that it is
impossible for those who do believe in a personal God
ever adequately to practise meditation or to have a genuine
mystical experience. Of this I shall have more to say
later. Meanwhile, we must concern ourselves with the
practical aspects of the subject. From a humanistic point
of view, what precisely is the point and purpose of medi¬
tation? The following words from Professor Irving
Babbitt’s very valuable essay on Buddha and the Occident
supply the answer. ‘We come here to what is for Buddha
fundamental in religion. To many things that have been
regarded as indispensable by other faiths — for example,
prayer and belief in a personal deity — he grants a secondary
plaqe or even no place at all; but without the act of re¬
collection or spiritual concentration he holds that the
religious life cannot subsist at all.’ Speaking of Buddhist
love and compassion, Professor Babbitt remarks that they
can, like Nirvana, ‘be understood only in connection with
the special form of activity that is put forth in meditation.
Buddhist love does not well forth spontaneously from the
natural man, but is, like Christian charity, the super¬
natural virtue par excellence. The current confusion on
this point is perhaps the most striking outcome of the
sentimentalism of the eighteenth century, and of the
emotional romanticism of the nineteenth century that
prolonged it. This confusion may be defined psycho¬
logically as a tendency to substitute for a super-rational
concentration of will a sub-rational expansion of feeling.’
The function, then, of meditation is to help a man to

247

. ENDS AND MEANS

put forth a special quality of will. (‘Meditation,’ says San
Pedro de Alcantara, ‘is nothing but a discourse addressed
by the intellect to the will.’) This special quality of will,
which is peculiar to man, must be regarded as a fact of
observation and experience. How shall this fact be ex¬
plained? The Christian, as Babbitt points out, explains it
in terms of divine grace, as something imparted from some
supernatural source existing outside the individual. The
Buddhist affirms that ‘self is the lord of self* and sees the
super-rational will as something latent in the individual
psyche, a potentiality that any man, if he so desires and
knows how, can actualize either in his present existence or
(more probably, since the road to enlightenment is long
and steep) in some future life. We see, then, that from a
humanistic point of view, meditation is a particularly
effective method of self-education.

Rites and ceremonials are essentially social activities.
(The person who wishes to perform rites in private is
generally the victim of a compulsion neurosis, which
forces him, as Dr. Johnson was forced, to live his life to
the accompaniment of elaborate gesticulations and formulas.)
They provide, among other things, a mechanism by means
of which people having a common emotional concern may
have their sense of solidarity revived. Ritual is a kind of
emotional cement which can give cohesion to great masses
of people.

Physiological religion may be either solitary or social.
Thus, considerable numbers of individuals can take part in
a religious dance j but where the training is by means of
ascetic practices or the acquisition of conscious control
over hitherto unconscious physical processes, it must in
the nature of things be solitary.

In the same way emotional religion may be either solitary
or social. The attempt to establish an emotional relation¬
ship with a divine person may be made either alone or in

248

RELIGIOUS PRACTICES

the company of others. In the latter case some form of
ritual is frequently made to serve, as it were, as a channel
along which the shared emotion of the worshippers may
flow towards its object.

Meditation is generally practised in solitude; but there
is also such a thing as group meditation. The conditions
for successful group meditation are as follows. First, the
group must not exceed a certain size, otherwise it is ex¬
tremely unlikely that its members will attain to that in¬
tuition of solidarity with one another and with something
greater than themselves, which it is the purpose of group
meditation to achieve. Second, the individuals composing
the group must be exercised in the art of recollection and
have some experience of its good results. A group into
which children are admitted, or which contains adults
who, however well intentioned, do not know how to
practise recollection, nor what is its value when practised,
is practically certain to achieve nothing. Neglecting to
study the psychology of their religion, the Quakers have
often made the mistake of attempting group meditation in
meetings of unwieldy size, disturbed by the presence of
fidgeting children and untrained adults. Such meetings
are almost always a failure. Not all Quaker meetings,
however, are failures. Where conditions are favourable,
the purpose of group meditation is still achieved, just as
it was in the early days of Quakerism. Group meditation
is known among the Hinayana Buddhists of Ceylon and
the Mahayana Buddhists of Tibet. In Japan the Zen monks
practise recollection all together, each in his appointed
place in the meditation hall of the monastery. Group
meditation is also practised by certain Moslem dervishes
in Asia Minor — or at least was practised by them, until
Kemal Ataturk saw fit, a few years ago, to hang them all.

It is worth while, in this context, to expand a statement

made in an earlier chapter to the effect that all dictators

249

ENDS AND MEANS

and, in general, all politically minded reformers, are pro¬
foundly distrustful of the mystic. The reason for this is
not far to seek. ‘Religion,’ in Professor Whitehead’s
words, ‘is world loyalty.’ There is a ‘connection between
universality and solitariness,’ inasmuch as ‘universality
is a disconnection from immediate surroundings.’ But
disconnection from immediate surroundings is precisely
what the politician, especially the dictatorial politician who
thinks in terms of class and nation, cannot tolerate. All
the dictators, whatever their colour, have attacked religion.
Where the dictatorship is revolutionary, this hostility to
religion is due in part to the fact that, as a political institution,
the Church is generally on the side of the vested interests.
But even where, as in Germany, the dictatorship supports
and is supported by the vested interests, hostility to
religion is hardly less intense than in countries where the
dictatorship is revolutionary. In Italy, it is true, Mussolini
has made his peace with the Church — but has made it on
his own terms. The Church has received a few square
miles of independent territory; but Mussolini has taken in
exchange the Church’s influence over the Italian mind.
Italy, then, is only an apparent exception to the rule. Any
religion — whether theistic, pantheistic or, like Buddhism,
atheistic — which trains men to be non-attached to the
‘things of this world’ and which teaches them loyalty to
the integrating principle of the universe is anathema to
the dictator, who demands of his subjects intense attach¬
ment, in the form of a frenzied nationalism, and a loyalty
addressed exclusively to himself and the State of which he
is the head. The dictator and, in general, the politician
cannot admit an individual’s right to universality and
solitariness. He demands that all men shall be passionately
gregarious and parochial. Hence Hitler’s persecution of
Christians, Protestant and Catholic alike; hence Russia’s
anti-God campaigns; hence the liquidation of the mystical

250

RELIGIOUS PRACTICES

sects of dervishes, not only by Kemal, but also by Ibn
Saud; hence Mussolini’s machiavellian use of religion as
an instrument of government, hence his policy of making
God play second fiddle to Caesar, hence the care he takes
that the young shall not be taught monotheistic world
loyalty, but only loyalty to the local idols, the nation,
the Party and himself.1

1 In Japan the ruling classes have used the technique of meditation
to train the will in the service of militarism. Naval cadets were,
perhaps still are, put through a course of Zen mind-training. Like
all other instruments, this method can be misused by those who wish
to do so.

251

Chapter XIV
BELIEFS

rtf the preceding chapters I have posed and attempted
to answer three questions. First : what do we want to
become ? Second : what are we now ? Third : how do we
propose to pass from our present condition to the condition
we desire to reach ? Of these three questions, the third has
been answered methodically, in a series of more or less
elaborate discussions of ways and means. The second has
been answered incidentally at different stages of these dis¬
cussions. The first, it will be remembered, was asked in
the opening chapter and received only the briefest and most
categorical answers. In what follows I propose to examine
those answers — to consider the social ideals of the prophets
and the personal ideals of the founders of religions in the
light of what we know about the world. ‘All that we are,
is the result of what we have thought/ Men live in accord¬
ance with their philosophy of life, their conception of the
world. This is true even of the most thoughtless. It is
impossible to live without a metaphysic. The choice that
is given us is not between some kind of metaphysic and no
metaphysic; it is always between a good metaphysic and
a bad metaphysic, a metaphysic that corresponds reason¬
ably closely with observed and inferred reality and one
that doesn’t. Logically, this discussion of the nature
of the world should have preceded the discussion of the
practical ways and means for modifying ourselves and
the society in which we live. But the arrangement that
is logically most correct is not always the most con¬
venient. For various reasons it has seemed to be

252

BELIEFS

expedient to reserve this discussion of first principles
to the last chapters.

Let us begin by a summary, in the most general terms,
of what we know about the world we live in. Science, in
Meyerson’s phrase, is the reduction of diversity to identity.1
The diverse, the brute irrational fact, is given by our senses.
But we are not content to accept diversity as so given. We
have a hunger and thirst for explanation and, for the human
mind, explanation consists in the discovery of identity
behind diversity. Any theory which postulates the exist¬
ence of identities behind diversities strikes us as being
intrinsically plausible.

Nature seems to satisfy the mind’s craving; for, upon
investigation, it turns out that identities do in fact underlie
apparent diversity. But explanation in these terms is never
quite complete. The facts of sensation and of irreversible
change in time are irrationals which cannot be completely
rationalized by reduction to identity. Science recognizes
the specificity of things as well as their underlying sameness.
Hegel’s mistake was to imagine that nature was wholly
rational and therefore deducible a priori. It would be
convenient if this were the case; but unfortunately it
isn’t.

The diversity of the material world has been reduced, so
for as such reduction is possible, to an ultimate identity.
All matter, according to the physicist, is built up, in a
limited number of patterns, out of units of energy which,
in isolation, seem to possess none of the qualities ordinarily
associated with matter in the mass. Between a billion sub¬
atomic units and one sub-atomic unit there is a difference,
not only of quantity, but also of quality. The natural
sciences, such as physics, chemistry, biology, are concerned
with matter as built up into varying degrees of patterned
complexity. The specificity of things, immediately per-
1 See Chapter II.

213

ENDS AND MEANS

ceived by our senses, is found to be correlated with the.
number and the arrangement of ultimate units of energy.

The material universe is pictured by science as composed
of a diversity of patterns of a single substance. Common
sense arbitrarily selects certain packets of patterned energy-
units and regards them as separate, individual existents.
This proceeding would seem to be entirely unjustifiable.
So-called separate, individual existents are dependent upon
one another for their very being. They are interconnected
by a network of relationships — electro-magnetic, gravi¬
tational, chemical and, in the case of sentient beings, mental.
That network gives them their being and reality. An indi¬
vidual existent is nothing except in so far as it is a part of
a larger whole. In other words, it is not an individual
existent. The things we ordinarily call objects or indi¬
viduals — a tree, a man, a table — are not ‘concrete realities,’
as the romantic anti-intellectuals would have us believe.
They are abstractions from a reality that consists, as sys¬
tematic investigation reveals, of a network of relations
between the interdependent parts of an incalculably greater
whole. A man, for example, is what he is only in virtue of
his relationship with the surrounding universe. His entire
existence is conditioned by his neighbourhood to the earth,
with its powerful gravitational field; radiations of many
kinds make him dependent on distant heavenly bodies ; he
is the locus of a continuous process of chemical exchange;
mentally, he is related to and conditioned by the minds of
his contemporaries and predecessors. The common-sense
claim that we live among, and ourselves are, independent
existents is based upon ignorance. In present circum¬
stances, however, those who insist on talking of men and
women as though they were ‘concrete’ independent exist¬
ents can excuse themselves on the ground that such a
description, though incorrect, is less misleading than that
of the political theorists who consider that human beings

254

BELIEFS

should be sacrificed to such entities as ‘the nation,’ ‘the
state,’ ‘the party,’ ‘the destiny of the race’ and so on. The
truth is that there are many different levels of abstraction
from reality. The entities with which political theory deals
belong to a higher order of abstraction than do the separate,
individual existents of common sense — are more remote,
that is to say, from concrete reality, which consists of the
interdependent parts of a totality. The monstrous evils
which arise when remote abstractions, like ‘nation’ and
‘state’ are regarded as realities more concrete and of greater
significance than human beings may be remedied, in some
measure, by the insistence on the relative concreteness of
individual men and women. But this last doctrine is itself
the source of very great evils, which cannot be remedied
until we recognize, and choose to act upon, the truth that
the ‘individual’ is also an abstraction from reality. Separate,
individual existents are illusions of common sense. Scien¬
tific investigation reveals (and these findings, as we shall
see later on, are confirmed by the direct intuition of the
trained mystic and contemplative) that concrete reality con¬
sists of the interdependent parts of a totality and that
independent existents are merely abstractions from that
reality.

Recent scientific investigations have made it clear that
the world of sense experience and of common sense is only
a small part of the world as a whole. It is small for two
reasons : first, because we are confined to a particular point
in space and have scarcely any knowledge by direct acquain¬
tance and little knowledge even by inference of the con¬
ditions prevailing in distant parts of the universe; second,
because the organs by means of which we establish direct
communication with the outside world are incapable of
apprehending the whole of reality. This second limitation
is of more significance than the first. Even if we were able
to make voyages of exploration through interstellar space,

*55

ENDS AND MEANS

we should still be incapable of seeing electro-magnetic
vibrations shorter than those we now perceive as violet or
longer than those of which we are conscious as red. We
should still be unable actually to see or feel even so large an
object as a molecule. The shortest instant of time per¬
ceptible to us would still be a large fraction of a second.
We should still be stone deaf to all sounds above a certain
pitch. We should still be without the faculties that enable
migrating birds to find their way. And so on. Every
animal species inhabits a home-made universe, hollowed out
of the real world by means of its organs of perception and
its intellectual faculties. In man’s case the intellectual facul¬
ties are so highly developed that he is able, unlike the other
animals, to infer the existence of the larger world enclosing
his private universe. He cannot see beyond the violet; but
he knows by inference that ultra-violet radiations exist and
he is even able to make practical use of these radiations
which sense and common sense assure him do not exist.
The universe in which we do our daily living is the product
of our limitations. We ourselves have made it, selecting it
(because we wished to or were incapable of doing other¬
wise) from a total reality much larger than, and qualitatively
different from, the universe of common sense. To this
most important of fundamental scientific discoveries I shall
have occasion to return, in another context, later on.

So much for the scientific picture of the material world.
The scientific picture of mind is unfortunately much less
clearly outlined. Indeed, there is no single scientific picture
of mind ; there are several irreconcilably different pictures.
Some scientific investigators insist that mind is merely an
epiphenomenon of matter ; that the brain secretes thought
as die liver secretes bile; that the very notion of conscious¬
ness can be discarded altogether and that all mental activity
can be explained in terms of conditioned reflexes; that the
mind is nothing but an instrument, forged during the course

256

BELIEFS

of evolution, for securing food, sexual satisfaction and the
conditions of physical survival. Others, on the contrary,
argue that the phenomena investigated by science are to a
considerable extent constructs of the investigating con¬
sciousness; that mind cannot be determined by a ‘matter’
which is itself in part a creation of mind ; that mind is a
fundamental reality in the universe and is consequently able
to pass valid judgments about the nature of the world ; that
the laws of thought are also laws of things. Which of these
two parties is in the right ? In this context one fact emerges
as highly significant. All men of science, whatever their
views, consistently act as though they believed in the ability
of the human intellect, using the method of logic, to make
true judgments about the nature of the world. Such is the
behaviour even of the Behaviourist. But, according to his
own theory, the Behaviourist (like the other disparagers of
mind) has no right to behave in this way. If mind is merely
an epiphenomenon of matter, if consciousness is completely
determined by physical motions, if the intellect is only a
machine for securing food and sexual pleasure, then there
is absolutely no reason for supposing that any theory pro¬
duced by this instrument can have universal validity. If
Behaviourism, for example, is correct, there is no reason
for supposing that the mind can make any kind of valid
judgment about the world. But among judgments about
the world figures the theory of Behaviourism. Therefore,
if Behaviourism is correct, there is no reason for attaching
the slightest importance to the opinions, among others, of
Behaviourists. In other words, if Behaviourism is correct,
it is probable that Behaviourism is incorrect.

All who advance theories of mind containing the words
‘nothing but,’ tend to involve themselves in this kind of
contradiction. The very fact that they formulate theories
which they believe to have general validity, the very fact
that, having studied a few phenomena (which are anyhow

R 257

ENDS AND MEANS

not phenomena but ‘epiphenomena,’ facts of consciousness)
they should feel themselves justified in making inductions
about all phenomena past, present and future, constitutes
in itself a sufficient denial of the validity of ‘nothing-but’
judgments concerning the nature of the mind. All science
is based upon an act of faith — faith in the validity of the
mind’s logical processes, faith in the ultimate explicability
of the world, faith that the laws of thought are laws of
things. In practice, I repeat, if not always in theory, such
conceptions are fundamental to all scientific activity. For
the rest, scientists are opportunists. They will pass from
a common-sense view of the world to advanced idealist
theories, making use of one or the other according to the
field of study in which they are at work. Unfortunately,
few scientists in these days of specialization are ever called
upon to work in more than one small field of study. Hence
there is a tendency on the part of individual specialists to
accept as true particular theories which are in fact only
temporarily convenient. It is highly unfortunate that so
few scientists are ever taught anything about the meta¬
physical foundations of science.

Recent research in medicine, in experimental psychology
and in what is still called parapsychology has thrown some
light on the nature of mind and its position in the world.
During the last forty years the conviction has steadily grown
among medical men that very many cases of disease, organic
as well as functional, are directly caused by mental states.
The body becomes ill because the mind controlling it either
secretly wants to make it ill, or else because it is in such a
state of agitation that it cannot prevent the body from
sickening. Whatever its physical nature, resistance to
disease is unquestionably correlated with the psychological
condition of the patient.1 That even so grossly ‘physical’

1 For the physical basis of resistance, see The Nature of Disease ,
by J. E. R. McDonagh, F.R.C.S.

258

BELIEFS

a complaint as dental caries may be due to mental causes
was maintained in a paper read before the American Dental
Congress in 1937. The author pointed out that children
living on a perfectly satisfactory diet may still suffer from
dental decay. In such cases, investigation generally shows
that the child’s life at home or at school is in some way
unsatisfactory. The teeth decay because their owner is
under mental strain.

Mind not only makes sick, it also cures. An optimistic
patient has more chance of getting well than a patient who
is worried and unhappy. The recorded instances of faith¬
healing include cases in which even organic diseases were
cured almost instantaneously.

Experimenters in hypnotism have shown that it is pos¬
sible to raise a blister by merely telling a deeply hypnotized
subject that he is being burnt. The metal which touches
the skin is cold ; but the subject feels pain and displays all
the physical symptoms of a burn. Conversely, hypnotism
can be used to produce anaesthesia, even in major opera¬
tions. Thus, in the late forties of last century, James
Esdaile performed over two hundred operations upon
patients anaesthetized by means of hypnosis. Esdaile’s
surgical technique was pre-Listerian; nevertheless, the mor¬
tality among his hypnotized patients was extremely low.

Systematic researches designed to demonstrate the exist¬
ence of telepathy have been conducted at intervals during
the last fifty years. Of these the most recent and the most
considerable are those which Professor Rhine has been
carrying out at Duke University in North Carolina. Rhine’s
work, which has been successfully repeated by several other
investigators, leaves no doubt as to the existence of tele¬
pathy and clairvoyance and very little doubt as to the exist¬
ence of pre-vision. In his presidential address delivered
before the Society for Psychical Research in 1936, Pro¬
fessor C. D. Broad discusses the problems raised by tele-

259

ENDS AND MEANS

pathy. How does telepathy work? That it is not a
physical process akin to radio transmission is obvious ; for
the strength of the messages does not diminish with distance.
After discussing various other alternatives, Professor Broad
concludes that it is probably necessary to postulate the
existence of some kind of purely mental medium, in which
individual minds are bathed, as in a kind of non-physical
ether. If there is such a thing as pre-vision, we must pre¬
sume that this mental medium has its existence outside time.
It would seem, then, that mind, or at any rate something of
a mental nature — a ‘psychic factor’ within a psychic
medium — exists independently of the body and of the
spatial and temporal conditions of bodily life.

I have considered the scientific picture of the material
world and the scientific pictures of mind. It is now time to
consider the scientific picture of the history of this mental-
material conglomerate. The only part of the universe with
which we have direct acquaintance is this planet. It is also
the only part of the universe in which we can study life and
consciousness. How far are we justified in drawing infer¬
ences about the general nature of things from the inferences
previously drawn from the rather scanty evidence about
the history of life on this planet ? It is hard indeed to say.
We have seen that matter on the earth seems to be built
up from the same energy-units as constitute matter in
remote parts of the universe and that the laws of thought
are laws of things, not only here, but, to all appearance, also
there. This being so, to generalize from our inferences
regarding the nature of our planetary history would seem
to be a process that is at any rate not completely illegitimate.
Meanwhile, however, we have to discover what the nature
of that history is.

I am not qualified to discuss the methods of evolution,
nor, in the present context, does there seem to be any good
reason for embarking upon such a discussion. For our

260

BELIEFS

particular purposes, the results of evolution are more signifi¬
cant than the mechanism by which those results were
achieved. In regard to this mechanism, the evidence avail¬
able seems to point to the conclusion that mutation, hybrid¬
ization, retardation of growth and fcetalization (which are
themselves the products of mutation), and natural selection
are sufficient to account for evolutionary change and that
it is unnecessary to invoke such concepts as orthogenesis
or the inheritance of acquired characters. Lamarckism has
often been supported by those who are anxious to vindicate
the pre-eminence of mind in the world. But, as Haldane
has pointed out, these crusaders are really doing a dis¬
service to their cause. If characters acquired as the result
of more or less intelligently directed effort are inherited,
then we should expect evolution to be a rapid process. But
in fact it is extremely slow. If evolution is due to ‘cunning’
rather than ‘luck,’ then the cunning must be of a pretty
feeble kind; for it has brought life a relatively short way
in a very long time. In fact, the evidence for Lamarckism
is extremely inadequate. (Neither Lamarckism nor the
orthogenetics theory seems to be compatible with the fact
that most mutations are demonstrably deleterious.) Mind,
as we know, can affect the body profoundly and in a great
variety of ways. But, as a matter of empirical fact, this
power of affecting the body is limited. To modify the
arrangement of the genes must be numbered, it would
seem, among the things it cannot do.

There is only one other point in regard to the mechanism
of selection about which I need speak in the present context.
Competition, when it exists, is of two kinds: between
members of different species (inter-specific) and between
members of the same species (intra-specific). Intra-specific
selection is commoner among abundant species than among
species with a small membership and plays a more important
part in their evolution. Many of the results of natural

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ENDS AND MEANS

selection are demonstrably deleterious, and this is found to
be the case above all where the selection has been brought
about by intra-specific competition. For example, intra¬
specific competition leads to an excessively precise adapta¬
tion to a given set of circumstances — in other words, to
excessive specialization which, as we shall see later on, is
always inimical to genuine biological progress. Haldane
regards all intra-specific competition as being, on the whole,
biologically evil. Competition between adults of the same
species tends to ‘render the species as a whole less success¬
ful in coping with its environment. . . . The special adapta¬
tions favoured by intra-specific competition divert a certain
amount of energy from other functions.’ Man has now
little to fear from competition with other species. His
worst enemies outside his own species are insects and
bacteria; and even with these he has been, and doubtless
will continue to be, able to deal successfully. For man,
competition is now predominantly intra-specific. A dis¬
passionate analysis of the circumstances in which the human
race now lives makes it clear that most of this intra-specific
competition is not imposed by any kind of biological neces¬
sity, but is entirely gratuitous and voluntary. In other
words, we are wantonly and deliberately pursuing a policy
which we need not pursue and which we have the best
scientific reasons for supposing to be disastrous to the
species as a whole. We are using our intelligence to adapt
ourselves more and more effectively to the modem con¬
ditions of intra-specific competition. We are doing our
best to develop a militaristic ‘ hypertely,’ to become, in
other words, dangerously specialized in the art of killing
our fellows.

Evolution has resulted in the world as we know it to¬
day. Is there any reason for regarding this world as superior
to the world of earlier geological epochs? In other words,
can evolution be regarded as a genuine progress? These

262

BELIEFS

questions can be answered, with perfect justification, in the
affirmative. Certain properties, which it is impossible not
to regard as valuable, have been developed in the course of
evolution. The lower forms of life persist more or less
unchanged ; but among the higher forms there has been a
definite trend towards greater control and greater independ¬
ence of the physical environment. Beings belonging to the
highest forms of life have increased their capacity for self¬
regulation, have created an internal environment capable of
remaining stable throughout very great changes in the
outer world, have equipped themselves with elaborate
machinery for picking up knowledge of the outer world, as
well as of the inner, and have developed a wonderfully
effective instrument for dealing with that knowledge.
Evolutionary progress is of two kinds: general, all-round
progress and one-sided progress in a particular direction.
This last leads to specialization. From the evidence pro¬
vided by the study of fossils and living forms, we are justi¬
fied in inferring that any living form which has gone in for
one-sided progress thereby makes it impossible for itself to
achieve generalized progress. Nothing fails like success;
and creatures which have proved eminently successful in
specializing themselves to perform one sort of task and to
live in one sort of environment are by that very fact
foredoomed to ultimate failure.

Failure may take the form of extinction, or alternatively,
of survival and adaptive radiation into forms that reach a
relatively stable position and become incapable of further
development, since such development would imperil the
equilibrium existing between the living creature and its
environment. Only one species, of all the millions that
exist and have existed, has hitherto resisted the temptation
to specialize. Sooner or later all the rest have succumbed
and have thus put themselves out of the running in the
evolutionary race. This is true even of the mammals.

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ENDS AND MEANS

After achieving a stable inner environment, placental and,
in some cases, monotocous birth, highly developed sense
organs, and a well co-ordinated nervous system, all but one
proceeded to specialize and so to shut themselves off from
the possibility of further progress. Man alone kept him¬
self free from specialization and was therefore able to go
on progressing in the direction of greater awareness, greater
intelligence, greater control over environment. Moreover,
alone of all living beings upon this planet he is in a position
to advance from his present position. If man were to
become extinct, it seems certain that no other existing
animal would be able to develop into a being comparable
to man for control over or independence of environment,
for capacity to know the world and its own mind.

What are the general conclusions to be drawn from the
scientific picture of life’s history on this planet? There is
no need, in this context, to consider any of the lower forms
of life. It is enough to point out, for example, that cold¬
bloodedness limits the power of any animal to become
independent of its environment ; that effective control over
the environment is impossible for animals of less than a
certain size; that some animals are not only too small but
are predestined, as the arthropods are predestined by their
system of tracheal breathing, to remain small to the end of
the chapter; that absolute smallness limits the size of the
nervous system and so, apparently, of the amount of mental
power which any animal can dispose of. And so forth. We
can sum the matter up by saying that progress can be
achieved only by the highest types of animal life.

Even among these highest types evolution can continue
to be a genuine progress only when certain conditions are
fulfilled. Let us enumerate the most important of these
conditions.

First of all, an organism must advance, so to speak, along
the whole biological front and not with one part of itself or

264

BELIEFS

in one particular direction only. One-sided specialized
advance is incompatible with genuine progress. But one¬
sided specialist advance is encouraged, as we have seen, by
intra-specific competition. This brings us to the second of
our conditions, which is that intra-specific competition shall
be reduced to a minimum. Progress is dependent on the
preponderance of intra-specific co-operation over intra¬
specific competition. Other things being equal, that species
will make most progress whose members are least com¬
bative, most inclined to work together instead of against
one another. The third condition of biological progress is
intelligence. There can be no effective co-operation on any
level above the instinctive except among creatures which
are aware of one another’s needs and are able to communi¬
cate with one another. (It is worth noring that intelligence
cannot be developed except on the fulfilment of certain
physiological and mechanical conditions. These conditions
have been set forth by Elliot Smith and other authorities.
For example, among the conditions of human intelligence
must be numbered man’s erect carriage and the consequent
development of the hand.)

Intelligence is essential ; but intelligence cannot function
properly where it is too often or too violently interfered
with by the emotions, impulses and emotionally charged
sensations. The sensations most heavily charged with emo¬
tional content are sensations of smell. Man’s sense of smell
is relatively poor and this apparent handicap has proved to
be an actual advantage to him.1 Instead of running round
like a dog, sniffing at lamp-posts and becoming deeply
agitated by what he smells on them, man is able to stand
away from the world and use his eyes and his wits, relatively
unmoved. Nor is this all. His power of inhibiting emotion

1 Elliot Smith has shown that the parts of the human brain cor¬
related with the higher intellectual functions have developed at the
expense of the olfactory centre.

265

ENDS AND MEANS

once aroused is evidently much greater than that of most
other animals. When a human baby was brought up with
a baby chimpanzee (see The Ape and the Child , by Professor
and Mrs. Kellogg), it was found that the chimpanzee’s
intelligence, at least during the first eighteen months of life,
was more or less equal to the human’s. On the contrary,
its power of inhibiting emotion was far lower and it was
consequently unable very often to make use of its intelli¬
gence. (For example, when its parents went away, the
baby would cry for a few minutes, then settle down cheer¬
fully to play; the ape would be inconsolable for several
hours, during which it was incapable of doing anything
else but grieve.) Animals are almost as heavily handi¬
capped by excess of emotionality as by a lack of intelligence.
It is this excess of emotionality which has made it impossible
for all animals except man to pass from emotional to con¬
ceptual speech. Beasts can make noises expressive of their
feelings; but they cannot make noises which stand for
objects and ideas as such, objects and ideas considered apart
from the desires and emotions they arouse. Conceptual
speech made possible the development of disinterested
thinking, and the capacity to think disinterestedly was
responsible for the development of conceptual speech.

No account of the scientific picture of the world and its
history would be complete unless it contained a reminder
of the fact, frequently forgotten by scientists themselves,
that this picture does not even claim to be comprehensive.
From the world we actually live in, the world that is given
by our senses, our intuitions of beauty and goodness, our
emotions and impulses, our moods and sentiments, the man
of science abstracts a simplified private universe of things
possessing only those qualities which used to be called
‘primary.’ Arbitrarily, because it happens to be convenient;
because his methods do not allow him to deal with the
immense complexity of reality, he selects from the whole

266

BELIEFS

of experience only those elements which can be weighed,
measured, numbered, or which lend themselves in any
other way to mathematical treatment. By using this
technique of simplification and abstraction, the scientist has
succeeded to an astonishing degree in understanding and
dominating the physical environment. The success was
intoxicating and, with an illogicality which, in the circum¬
stances, was doubtless pardonable, many scientists and
philosophers came to imagine that this useful abstraction
from reality was reality itself. Reality as actually experi¬
enced contains intuitions of value and significance, contains
love, beauty, mystical ecstasy, intimations of godhead.
Science did not and still does not possess intellectual
instruments with which to deal with these aspects of reality.
Consequently it ignored them and concentrated its atten¬
tion upon such aspects of the world as it could deal with
by means of arithmetic, geometry and the various branches
of higher mathematics. Our conviction that the world is
meaningless is due in part to the fact (discussed in a later
paragraph) that the philosophy of meaninglessness lends
itself very effectively to furthering the ends of erotic or
political passion; in part to a genuine intellectual error —
the error of identifying the world of science, a world from
which all meaning and value has been deliberately excluded,
with ultimate reality. It is worth while to quote in this
context the words with which Hume closes his Enquiry'.
‘If we take in our hand any volume — of divinity, or school
metaphysics, for instance — let us ask, Does it contain any
abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No.
Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning
matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the
flames; for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illu¬
sion/ Hume mentions only divinity and school meta¬
physics; but his argument would apply just as cogently to
poetry, music, painting, sculpture and all ethical and reli-

267

ENDS AND MEANS

gious teaching. Hamlet contains no abstract reasoning
concerning quantity or number and no experimental reason
concerning evidence ; nor does the Hammerklavier Sonata,
nor Donatello’s David, nor the Tao Te Ching, nor The
Following of Christ. Commit them therefore to the flames :
for they can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

We are living now, not in the delicious intoxication
induced by the early successes of science, but in a rather
grisly morning-after, when it has become apparent that
what triumphant science has done hitherto is to improve
the means for achieving unimproved or actually deteriorated
ends. In this condition of apprehensive sobriety we are
able to see that the contents of literature, art, music — even
in some measure of divinity and school metaphysics — are
not sophistry and illusion, but simply those elements of
experience which scientists chose to leave out of account,
for the good reason that they had no intellectual methods
for dealing with them. In the arts, in philosophy, in reli¬
gion men are trying — doubtless, without complete success
— to describe and explain the non-measurable, purely quali¬
tative aspects of reality. Since the time of Galileo, scientists
have admitted, sometimes explicitly, but much more often
by implication, that they are incompetent to discuss such
matters. The scientific picture of the world is what it is
because men of science combine this incompetence with
certain special competences. They have no right to claim
that this product of incompetence and specialization is a
complete picture of reality. As a matter of historical fact,
however, this claim has constantly been made. The suc¬
cessive steps in the process of identifying an arbitrary
abstraction from reality with reality itself have been
described, very fully and lucidly, in Burtt’s excellent
Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science; and it is
therefore unnecessary for me to develop the theme any
further. All that I need add is the fact that, in recent years,

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BELIEFS

many men of science have come to realize that the scientific
picture of the world is a partial one — the product of their
special competence in mathematics and their special incom¬
petence to deal systematically with aesthetic and moral
values, religious experiences and intuitions of significance.
Unhappily, novel ideas become acceptable to the less intel¬
ligent members of society only with a very considerable
time-lag. Sixty or seventy years ago the majority of
scientists believed — and the belief often caused them con¬
siderable distress — that the product of their special incom¬
petence was identical with reality as a whole. To-day this
belief has begun to give way, in scientific circles, to a
different and obviously truer conception of the relation
between science and total experience. The masses, on the
contrary, have just reached the point where the ancestors
of to-day’s scientists were standing two generations back.
They are convinced that the scientific picture of an arbitrary
abstraction from reality is a picture of reality as a whole
and that therefore the world is without meaning or value.
But nobody likes living in such a world. To satisfy their
hunger for meaning and value, they turn to such doctrines
as Nationalism, Fascism and revolutionary Communism.
Philosophically and scientifically, these doctrines are
absurd; but for the masses in every community, they have
this great merit: they attribute the meaning and value
that have been taken away from the world as a whole to
the particular part of the world in which the believers
happen to be living.

These last considerations raise an important question,
which must now be considered in some detail. Does the
world as a whole possess the value and meaning that we
constantly attribute to certain parts of it (such as human
beings and their works) ; and, if so, what is the nature of
that value and meaning? This is a question which, a few
years ago, I should not even have posed. For, like so many

269

ENDS AND MEANS

of my contemporaries, I took it for granted that there was
no meaning. This was partly due to the fact that I shared
the common belief that the scientific picture of an abstrac¬
tion from reality was a true picture of reality as a whole;
partly also to other, non-intellectual reasons. I had motives
for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently
assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty
to find satisfying reasons for this assumption.

Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don’t know
because we don’t want to know. It is our will that decides
how and upon what subjects we shall use our intelligence.
Those who detect no meaning in the word generally do so
because, for one reason or another, it suits their books that
the world should be meaningless.

The behaviour of the insane is merely sane behaviour, a
bit exaggerated and distorted. The abnormal casts a reveal¬
ing light upon the normal. Hence the interest attaching,
among other madmen, to the extravagant figure of the
Marquis de Sade. The Marquis prided himself upon being
a thinker. His books, indeed, contain more philosophy
then pornography. The hungry smut-hound must plough
through long chapters of abstract speculation in order to
find the cruelties and obscenities for which he hungers.
De Sade’s philosophy was the philosophy of meaningless¬
ness carried to its logical conclusion. Life was without
significance. Values were illusory and ideals merely the
inventions of cunning priests and kings. Sensations and
animal pleasures alone possessed reality and were alone
worth living for. There was no reason why anyone should
have the slighest consideration for anyone else. For those
who found rape and murder amusing, rape and murder were
fully legitimate activities. And so on.

Why was the Marquis unable to find any value or signifi¬
cance in the world? Was his intellect more piercing than
that of other men? Was he forced by the acuity of his

270

BELIEFS

vision to look through the veils of prejudice and super¬
stition to the hideous reality behind them? We may doubt
it. The real reason why the Marquis could see no meaning
or value in the world is to be found in those descriptions
of fornications, sodomies and tortures which alternate with
the philosophizings of Justine and Juliette. In the ordinary
circumstances of life, the Marquis was not particularly cruel;
indeed, he is said to have got into serious trouble during
the Terror for his leniency towards those suspected of anti¬
revolutionary sentiments. His was a strictly sexual perver¬
sion. It was for flogging actresses, sticking penknives into
shop-girls, feeding prostitutes on sugar-plums impregnated
with cantharides, that he got into trouble with the police.
His philosophical disquisitions, which, like the porno¬
graphic day-dreams, were mostly written in prisons and
asylums, were the theoretical justification of his erotic
practices. Similarly his politics were dictated by the desire
to avenge himself on those members of his family and his
class who had, as he thought, unjustly persecuted him. He
was enthusiastically a revolutionary — at any rate in theory;
for, as we have seen, he was too gentle in practice to satisfy
his fellow-jacobins. His books are of permanent interest
and value because they contain a kind of reductio ad
absurdum of revolutionary theory. Sade is not afraid to
be a revolutionary to the bitter end. Not content with
denying the particular system of values embodied in the
ancien rlgime , he proceeds to deny the existence of any
values, any idealism, any binding moral imperatives what¬
soever. He preaches violent revolution not only in the
field of politics and economics, but (logical with the appal¬
ling logicality of the maniac) also in that of personal
relations, including the most intimate of all, the relations
between lovers. And, after all, why not ? If it is legitimate
to torment and kill in one set of circumstances, it must be
equally legitimate to torment and kill in all other circum-

271

ENDS AND MEANS

stances. De Sade is the one completely consistent and
thoroughgoing revolutionary of history.

If I have lingered so long over a maniac, it is because his
madness illuminates the dark places of normal behaviour.
No philosophy is completely disinterested. The pure love
of truth is always mingled to some extent with the need,
consciously or unconsciously felt by even the noblest and
the most intelligent philosophers, to justify a given form
of personal or social behaviour, to rationalize the traditional
prejudices of a given class or community. The philosopher
who finds meaning in the world is concerned, not only to
elucidate that meaning, but also to prove that it is most
clearly expressed in some established religion, some
accepted code of morals. The philosopher who finds
no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively
with a problem in pure metaphysics ; he is also concerned
to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally
should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should
not seize political power and govern in the way that they
find most advantageous to themselves. The voluntary, as
opposed to the intellectual, reasons for holding the doctrines
of materialism, for example, may be predominantly erotic,
as they were in the case of Lamettrie (see his lyrical account
of the pleasures of the bed in La Volupti and at the end of
V Homme Machine ), or predominantly political, as they
were in the case of Karl Marx. The desire to justify a par¬
ticular form of political organization and, in some cases,
of a personal will to power, has played an equally large
part in the formulation of philosophies postulating the
existence of a meaning in the world. Christian philosophers
have found no difficulty in justifying imperialism, war, the
capitalistic system, the use of torture, the censorship of the
press, and ecclesiastical tyrannies of every sort, from the
tyranny of Rome to the tyrannies of Geneva and New
England. In all these cases they have shown that the mean-

272

BELIEFS

ing of the world was such as to be compatible with, or
actually most completely expressed by, the iniquities I have
mentioned above — iniquities which happened, of course, to
serve the personal or sectarian interests of the philosophers
concerned. In due course there arose philosophers who
denied not only the right of these Christian special pleaders
to justify iniquity by an appeal to the meaning of the world,
but even their right to find any such meaning whatsoever.
In the circumstances, the fact was not surprising. One
unscrupulous distortion of the truth tends to beget other
and opposite distortions. Passions may be satisfied in the
process; but the disinterested love of knowledge suffers
eclipse.

For myself, as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries,
the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an
instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was
simultaneously liberation from a certain political and eco¬
nomic system and liberation from a certain system of
morality. We objected to the morality because it inter¬
fered with our sexual freedom ; we objected to the political
and economic system because it was unjust. The sup¬
porters of these systems claimed that in some way they
embodied the meaning (a Christian meaning, they insisted)
of the world. There was one admirably simple method of
confuting these people and at the same time justifying our¬
selves in our political and erotic revolt: we could deny
that the world had any meaning whatsoever. Similar tactics
had been adopted during the eighteenth century and for the
same reasons. From the popular novelists of the period,
such as Cr&illon and Andrea de Nerciat, we learn that the
chief reason for being ‘philosophical’ was that one might
be free from prejudices — above all, prejudices of a sexual
nature. More serious writers associated political with sexual
prejudice and recommended philosophy (in practice, the
philosophy of meaninglessness) as a preparation for social
S 273

ENDS AND MEANS

reform or revolution. The early nineteenth century wit¬
nessed a reaction towards meaningful philosophy of a kind
that could, unhappily, be used to justify political reaction.
The men of the new Enlightenment which occurred in the
middle years of the nineteenth century once again used
meaninglessness as a weapon against the reactionaries.
The Victprian passion for respectability was, however, so
great that, during the period when they were formulated,
neither Positivism nor Darwinism was used as a justification
for sexual indulgence. After the War the philosophy of
meaninglessness came once more triumphantly into fashion.
As in the days of Lamettrie and his successors the desire to
justify a certain sexual looseness played a part in the popu¬
larization of meaninglessness at least as important as that
played by the desire for liberation from an unjust and
inefficient form of social organization. By the end of the
’twenties a reaction had begun to set in — away from the
easy-going philosophy of general meaninglessness towards
the hard, ferocious theologies of nationalistic and revolu¬
tionary idolatry. Meaning was reintroduced into the world,
but only in patches. The universe as a whole still remained
meaningless, but certain of its parts, such as the nation, the
state, the class, the party, were endowed with significance
and the highest value. The general acceptance of a doctrine
that denies meaning and value to the world as a whole,
while assigning them in a supreme degree to certain
arbitrarily selected parts of the totality, can have only evil
and disastrous results. ‘All that we are (and consequently
all that we do) is the result of what we have thought.’
We have thought of ourselves as members of supremely
meaningful and valuable communities — deified nations,
divine classes and what not — existing within a meaning¬
less universe. And because we have thought like this,
rearmament is in full swing, economic nationalism becomes
ever more intense, the battle of rival propagandas grows

274

BELIEFS

ever fiercer, and general war becomes increasingly
probable.

It was the manifestly poisonous nature of the fruits that
forced me to reconsider the philosophical tree on which
they had grown. It is certainly hard, perhaps impossible,
to demonstrate any necessary connection between truth and
practical goodness. Indeed it was fashionable during the
Enlightenment of the middle nineteenth century to speak
of the need for supplying the masses with ‘vital lies’
calculated to make those who accepted them not only
happy, but well behaved. The truth — which was that
there was no meaning or value in the world — should be
revealed only to the few who were strong enough to
stomach it. Now, it may be, of course, that the nature of
things has fixed a great gulf between truth about the world
on the one hand and practical goodness on the other.
Meanwhile, however, the nature of things seems to have
so constituted the human mind that it is extremely reluctant
to accept such a conclusion, except under the pressure of
desire or self-interest. Furthermore, those who, to be
liberated from political or sexual restraint, accept the doc¬
trine of absolute meaninglessness tend in a short time to
become so much dissatisfied with their philosophy (in spite
of the services it renders) that they will exchange it for any
dogma, however manifestly nonsensical, which restores
meaning if only to a part of the universe. Some people, it
is true, can live contentedly with a philosophy of meaning¬
lessness for a very long time. But in most cases it will be
found that these people possess some talent or accomplish¬
ment that permits them to live a life which, to a limited extent,
is profoundly meaningful and valuable. Thus an artist
or a man of science can profess a philosophy of general
meaninglessness and yet lead a perfectly contented life.
The reason for this must be sought in the fact that artistic
creation and scientific research are absorbingly delightful

275

ENDS AND MEANS

occupations, possessing, moreover, a certain special signi¬
ficance in virtue of their relation to truth and beauty.
Nevertheless, artistic creation and scientific research may be,
and constantly are, used as devices for escaping from the
responsibilities of life. They are proclaimed to be ends
absolutely good in themselves — ends so admirable that
those who pursue them are excused from bothering about
anything else. This is particularly true of contemporary
science. The mass of accumulated knowledge is so great
that it is now impossible for any individual to have a
thorough grasp of more than one small field of study.
Meanwhile, no attempt is made to produce a comprehen¬
sive synthesis of the general results of scientific research.
Our universities possess no chair of synthesis. All endow¬
ments, moreover, go to special subjects — and almost always
to subjects which have no need of further endowment, such
as physics, chemistry and mechanics. In our institutions of
higher learning about ten times as much is spent on the
natural sciences as on the sciences of man. All our efforts
are directed, as usual, to producing improved means to un¬
improved ends. Meanwhile intensive specialization tends
to reduce each branch of science to a condition almost
approaching meaninglessness. There are many men of science
who are actually proud of this state of things. Specialized
meaninglessness has come to be regarded, in certain circles,
as a kind of hall-mark of true science. Those who attempt
to relate the small particular results of specialization with
human life as a whole and its relation to the universe at
large are accused of being bad scientists, charlatans, self¬
advertisers. The people who make such accusations do so,
of course, because they do not wish to take any responsi¬
bility for anything, but merely to retire to their cloistered
laboratories, and there amuse themselves by performing
delightfully interesting researches. Science and art are only
too often a superior kind of dope, possessing this advantage

276

BELIEFS

over booze and morphia : that they can be indulged in with
a good conscience and with the conviction that, in the
process of indulging, one is leading the ‘higher life.’ Up
to a point, of course, this is true. The life of the scientist or
the artist is a higher life. Unfortunately, when led in an
irresponsible, one-sided way, the higher life is probably more
harmful for the individual than the lower life of the average
sensual man and certainly, in the case of the scientist, much
worse for society at large.

We see, then, that the mind is so constituted that a philo¬
sophy of meaninglessness is accepted only at the suggestion
of the passions and is persisted in only by those whose
heredity and upbringing make it possible for them to live
as though the world were at least partially meaningful. The
fact that the mind has a certain difficulty in accepting the
philosophy of meaninglessness is significant, if only to the
extent that it raises the question whether truth and good¬
ness may not be somehow correlated in the nature of things.
Nor is the old Stoic appeal to the consensus gentium by any
means entirely negligible. That so many philosophers and
mystics, belonging to so many different cultures, should
have been convinced, by inference or by direct intuition,
that the world possesses meaning and value is a fact suffi¬
ciently striking to make it worth while at least to investigate
the belief in question.

Let us begin the investigation by considering the stock
arguments used in support of theism. Of these the argu¬
ment from design was at one time the most popular. To¬
day it no longer carries conviction. To begin with, we are
no longer certain that the design, upon which Paley and
the earlier thinkers based their arguments, is more than the
appearance of design. What looks as though it had been
planned in advance may be in fact merely the result of a
long-drawn process of adaptation. The relationship exist¬
ing between X and Y may be the kind of relationship that

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ENDS AND MEANS

an intelligent being would have planned. But that is no
reason for supposing that an intelligent being did in fact
plan it. Such a relationship may equally well be the result
of natural selection working blindly to produce a state of
equilibrium between two originally discordant and mutually
unadapted entities. Moreover, even if the evidence for
design is taken at its face value (as it was taken by Kant),
there is still no reason for supposing that the designer was
a single supreme being. Upon this point the arguments
adduced by Hume and Kant are decisive.

The ontological argument is even less convincing than the
argument from design. Anselm was decisively refuted by
Aquinas and Descartes by Kant. In recent years, the verbal
foundations of logic have been subjected to the most search¬
ing analysis, as the result of which the ontological argument
seems still less satisfactory than it did even in Kant’s day.

The cosmological proof of the existence of God is based
upon the argument that if contingent beings exist there
must exist a necessary being; and that if there is an ens
necessarium it must be at the same time an ens realissimum.
In his earlier writings Kant produced a very elaborate
speculative proof of God’s existence, based upon the argu¬
ment that the possible presupposes the actual. Later, when
he had developed his Critical Philosophy, he rejected this
proof and sought to show that all the arguments for natural
theology, including the cosmological, were unsound. In
the course of his later refutation of the cosmological proof,
Kant has to dispose of the natural theologian’s argument
that the existence of causally related events implies the
existence of a First Cause. He does this by arguing that
causality is merely a principle for ordering appearances in
the sensible world, therefore cannot legitimately be used
for transcending the world of sense. This argument has
been revived, in a less pedantic form, by Brunschvicg in his
Progris de la Conscience (ii. 778) : ‘En toute Evidence , ceux-

BELIEFS

Id mime qui invoquent le principe de la causaliti comme me
loi fondamentale de la raison humaine , ne peuvent y obiir
strictement que s’ils en font usage pour relier de Vuniti d’un
» ugement deux objets dont l' existence Uur est prialablement
certifiie. C'est la loi elle-mime qui s' oppose d ce qu'ils aillent
forger de leur autoriti privee le terme qui manque pour la mise
en oeuvre effective du principe: l' application transcendentale de
la causaliti revient a la pitition d'm objet imaginaire' The
question arises : what are the objects which can be legitim¬
ately connected by the principle of causality ? Kant involved
himself in extraordinary difficulties by limiting causality to
events in the world of sense. But the only form of causality
with which we have direct acquaintance is our own volun¬
tary activity. We know directly that our will is the cause
of our performing a given action in the world of sense. It
is no doubt true, as Brunschvicg says, that we have no right
to apply the principle of causality except to objects of which
we already know, either by direct acquaintance or by infer¬
ence, that they exist. Acting on this principle, we may
legitimately postulate a causal connection between one
sense object and another sense object and also between a
sense object and a mental state which is not a sense object.
Whether in fact there can be mental states which do not
belong to individual human beings or animals is another
question. All that we can say in this particular context is
that, if such mental states exist, there seems to be no
reason why (supposing them to be analogous to our own
mental states) they should not be causally related to events
in the world of sense.

The moral argument for theism may be very briefly
summed up as follows. Moral action aims at the realiza¬
tion of the highest good. The highest good cannot be
realized except where there is a virtuous rational will in
persons and a world in which this virtuous rational will is
not thwarted — a world where virtue is united with happi-

279

ENDS AND MEANS

ness. But it is a matter of brute empirical fact that, in the
world of phenomena, the most virtuous are not necessarily
the happiest, and that the rational will is not always that
which gets itself done. It follows therefore that the union
of virtue and happiness, without which the highest good
cannot be realized, must be effected by some power external
to ourselves, a power which so arranges things that, what¬
ever partial and temporary appearance may be, the total
world order is moral and demonstrates the union of virtue
with happiness.

Those who oppose this argument do so, first, on the
ground that it is merely a piece of ‘wishful thinking,’ and,
second, that words like ‘virtue,’ ‘the good’ and all the rest
have no definite meaning, but change from one community
to another.

We discredit thoughts which have wishes as their fathers;
and in very many circumstances, we are certainly right in
doing so. But there are certain circumstances in which
wishes are a reliable source of information, not only about
ourselves, but also about the outside world. From the
premiss, for example, of thirst we are justified in arguing the
existence of something which can satisfy thirst. Nor is it
only in the phenomenal world that such wishful arguments
have validity. We have, as I have pointed out in an earlier
paragraph, a craving for explanation. This craving is satis¬
fied by the reduction of diversity to identity, so much so
that any theory which postulates the existence of identity
behind diversity seems to us intrinsically plausible. Like
philosophy and religion, science is an attempt systematic¬
ally to satisfy the craving for explanation in terms of
theories which seem plausible because they postulate the
existence of identity behind diversity. But here an interest¬
ing and highly significant fact emerges: observation and
experiment seem to demonstrate that what the human mind
regards as intrinsically plausible is in fact true and that the

280

BELIEFS

craving for explanation, which is a craving for identity
behind diversity, is actually satisfied by the real world ; for
the real world reveals itself as being in effect a unity in
diversity. The craving for explanation was felt by men
thousands of years before the instruments, by means of
which that craving could be scientifically satisfied, had been
invented. The old philosophers of nature assuaged that
craving by postulating the existence of some single sub¬
stance, material or mental, underlying the apparent diversity
of independent existents, or by proclaiming that all matter
must be built of identically similar atoms, variously arranged.
Within the last half-century investigation by means of
instruments of precision has actually demonstrated that
these cosmological theories which, up till then, could only
be described as pieces of wishful thinking designed to satisfy
the inborn craving for explanation, were in fact remarkably
consonant with the facts of the empirical world. The
craving for righteousness seems to be a human character¬
istic just as fundamental as the craving for explanation.
The moral argument in favour of theism is certainly a
piece of wishful thinking; but it is no more wishful than
the arguments in favour of the atomic theory propounded
by Democritus and Epicurus, or even by Boyle and Newton.
The theory by means of which these natural philosophers
tried to satisfy their craving for explanation was found to
be in tolerably close accord with the facts discovered by
the later investigators, equipped with more effective instru¬
ments for exploring physical reality. Whether it will ever
be possible to verify the theories of the moral philosphers
by direct observation and experiment seems doubtful. But
that is no reason for denying the truth of such theories.
Nor, as we have seen, is the fact that they originate in
wishes. * Tu ne me chercherais pas si tu ne me possedais’
wrote Pascal. ‘Ne t'inquiete done pas’ The theories
devised to satisfy the craving for explanation have proved

281

ENDS AND MEANS

to be remarkably accurate in their account of the nature of
the world; we have no right to reject as mere subjective
illusions the analogous thesis devised to satisfy the cravings
for righteousness, for meaning, for value.

At this point we are confronted by the argument that
such words as ‘good,’ ‘virtue* and the like have no definite
meaning, but signify now this, now that, according to the
degree of latitude, the colour of the skin, the local myth¬
ology. This is, of course, perfectly true. The content of
judgments of value is demonstrably variable. Two im¬
portant points should, however, be noted in this context.
The first is that such judgments are passed by all human
beings, that the category of value is universally employed.
The second is that, as knowledge, sensibility and non¬
attachment increase, the contents of the judgments of value
passed even by men belonging to dissimilar cultures tend
to approximate. The ethical doctrines taught in the Tao Te
Ching, by Gautama Buddha and his followers on the Lesser
and above all the Greater Vehicle, in the Sermon on the
Mount and by the best of the Christian saints, are not dis¬
similar. Among human beings who have reached a certain
level of civilization and of personal freedom from passion
and social prejudice there exists a real consensus gentium in
regard to ethical first principles. These first principles are,
of course, in constant danger from the passions and from
ignorance, itself in many cases the fruit of passion. Passion
and ignorance work, not only on individuals, but sometimes
also on entire communities. In the latter case a systematic
attempt is made to replace the ethical first principles of
civilized humanity by other first principles more in accord
with the prevailing mass-emotions and national interests.
This process is taking place at the present time all over the
world. Nationalistic and revolutionary passions find them¬
selves in conflict with the standards of civilized morality.
Consequently the standards of civilized morality are every-

282

BELIEFS

where denounced as false and wicked, and new standards
are set up in their place. The nature of these new standards
varies with the political ideals of the countries in which
they are set up — but varies only very slightly. Essentially
all the new moralities, Communist, Fascist, Nazi or merely
Nationalist, are singularly alike. All affirm that the end
justifies the means; and in all the end is the triumph of a
section of the human species over the rest. All justify the
unlimited use of violence and cunning. All preach the
subordination of the individual to a ruling oligarchy, deified
as ‘the State.’ All inculcate the minor virtues, such as
temperance, prudence, courage and the like; but all dis¬
parage the higher virtues, charity and intelligence, without
which the minor virtues are merely instruments for doing
evil with increased efficiency.

Examples of reversion to barbarism through mere ignor¬
ance are unhappily abundant in the history of Christianity.
The early Christians made the enormous mistake of
burdening themselves with the Old Testament, which
contains, along with much fine poetry and sound morality,
the history of the cruelties and treacheries of a Bronze-Age
people, fighting for a place in the sun under the protection
of its anthropomorphic tribal deity. Christian theologians
did their best to civilize and moralize this tribal deity; but,
inspired in every line, dictated by God himself, the Old
Testament was always there to refute them. Ancient
ignorance had been sanctified as revelation. Those whom
it suited to be ignorant and, along with them, the innocent
and uneducated could find in this treasure-house of bar¬
barous stupidity justifications for every crime and folly.
Texts to justify such abominations as religious wars, the
persecution of heretics, breaking of faith with unbelievers,
could be found in the sacred books and were in fact used
again and again throughout the whole history of the
Christian Church to mitigate the inconvenient decency of

283

ENDS AND MEANS

civilized morality. In the last analysis, all this folly and
wickedness can be traced back to a mistaken view of the
world. The Hebrews of the Bronze Age thought that the
integrating principle of the universe was a kind of
magnified human person, with all the feelings and passions
of a human person. He was wrathful, for example, he was
jealous, he was vindictive. This being so, there was no
reason why his devotees should not be wrathful, jealous
and vindictive. Among the Christians this primitive cos¬
mology led to the burning of heretics and witches, the
wholesale massacre of Albigensians, Catharists, Protestants,
Catholics and a hundred other sects. In the modem world
ignorance about the nature of the universe takes the form
of a refusal to speculate about that nature and an insistence
that there is no meaning or value except in such small and
arbitrarily selected parts of the whole as the nation, the
state, the class and the party. To believe that the nation
is God is a mistake just as grotesque as was the mistake
of supposing that the sun would die if it did not get
victims or that God is a kind of large invisible man, with
all the most disgraceful human passions.

We are back again at the point reached on an earlier
page — the point at which we discover that an obviously
untrue philosophy of life leads in practice to disastrous
results ; the point where we realize the necessity of seeking
an alternative philosophy that shall be true and therefore
fruitful of good. In the interval, we have considered the
classical arguments in favour of theism and have found that
some carry no conviction whatever, while the rest can only
raise a presumption in favour of the theory that the world
possesses some integrating principle that gives it significance
and value. There is probably no argument by which the
case for theism, or for deism, or for pantheism in either its
pancosmic or acosmic form, can be convincingly proved.
The most that ‘abstract reasoning’ (to use Hume’s phrase)

284

BELIEFS

can do is to create a presumption in favour of one or other
hypothesis; and this presumption can be increased by
means of ‘experimental reasoning concerning matter of
fact or evidence.’ Final conviction can only come to those
who make an act of faith. The idea is one which most of
us find very distressing. But it may be doubted whether
this particular act of faith is intrinsically more difficult than
those which we have to make, for example, every time we
frame a scientific hypothesis, every time that, from the
consideration of a few phenomena, we draw inference con¬
cerning all phenomena, past, present and future. On very
little evidence, but with no qualms of intellectual conscience,
we assume that our craving for explanation has a real object
in an explicable universe, that the aesthetic satisfaction we
derive from certain arguments is a sign that they are true,
that the laws of thought are also laws of things. There
seems to be no reason why, having swallowed this camel,
we should not swallow another, no larger really than the first.
The reasons why we strain at the second camel have been
given above. Once recognized, they cease to exist and
we become free to consider on their merits the evidence
and arguments that would reasonably justify us in making
the final act of faith and assuming the truth of a hypothesis
that we are unable fully to demonstrate.

‘Abstract reasoning’ must now give place to ‘experi¬
mental reasoning concerning matter of fact or evidence.’
Natural science, as we have seen, deals only with those
aspects of reality that are amenable to mathematical treat¬
ment. The rest it merely ignores. But some of the experi¬
ences thus ignored by natural science — aesthetic experiences,
for example, and religious experiences — throw much light
upon the present problem. It is with the fact of such experi¬
ences and the evidence they furnish concerning the nature
of the world that we have now to concern ourselves.

To discuss the nature and significance of aesthetic

285

ENDS AND MEANS

experience would take too long. It is enough, in this
place, merely to suggest that the best works of literary,
plastic and musical art give us more than mere pleasure;
they furnish us with information about the nature of the
world. The Sanctus in Beethoven’s Mass in D, Seurat’s
Grande Jatte , Macbeth — works such as these tell us, by
strange but certain implication, something significant about
the ultimate reality behind appearances. Even from the
perfection of minor masterpieces — certain sonnets of
Mallarm£, for instance, certain Chinese ceramics — we can
derive illuminating hints about the ‘something far more
deeply interfused,’ about ‘the peace of God that passeth
all understanding.’ But the subject of art is enormous and
obscure, and my space is limited. I shall therefore confine
myself to a discussion of certain religious experiences which
bear more directly upon the present problem than do our
experiences as creators and appreciators of art.

I have spoken in the preceding chapter of meditation as
a device, in Babbitt’s words, for producing a ‘super-rational
concentration of the will.’ But meditation is more than a
method of self-education; it has also been used, in every
part of the world and from the remotest periods, as a
•method for acquiring knowledge about the essential nature
of things, a method for establishing communion between
the soul and the integrating principle of the universe.
Meditation, in other words, is the technique of mysticism.
Properly practised, with due preparation, physical, mental
and moral, meditation may result in a state of what has
been called ‘transcendental consciousness’ — the direct in¬
tuition of, and union with, an ultimate spiritual reality
that is perceived as simultaneously beyond the self and in
some way within it. (‘God in the depths of us,’ says
Ruysbroeck, ‘receives God who comes to us: it is
God contemplating God.’) Non-mystics have denied the
validity of the mystical experience, describing it as merely

286

BELIEFS

subjective and illusory. But it should be remembered that,
to those who have never actually had it, any direct intuition
must seem subjective and illusory. It is impossible for the
deaf to form any idea of the nature or significance of music.
Nor is physical disability the only obstacle in the way of
musical understanding. An Indian, for example, finds
European orchestral music intolerably noisy, complicated,
over-intellectual, inhuman. It seems incredible to him that
anyone should be able to perceive beauty and meaning,
to recognize an expression of the deepest and subtlest
emotions, in this elaborate cacophony. And yet, if he has
patience and listens to enough of it, he will come at last
to realize, not only theoretically, but also by direct,
immediate intuition, that this music possesses all the
qualities which Europeans claim for it. Of the significant
and pleasurable experiences of life only the simplest are
open indiscriminately to all. The rest cannot be had
except by those who have undergone a suitable training.
One must be trained even to enjoy the pleasures of alcohol
and tobacco ; first whiskies seem revolting, first pipes turn
even the strongest of boyish stomachs. Similarly, first
Shakespeare sonnets seem meaningless; first Bach fugues,
a bore; first differential equations, sheer torture. But
training changes the nature of our spiritual experiences.
In due course, contact with an obscurely beautiful poem,
an elaborate piece of counterpoint or of mathematical
reasoning, causes us to feel direct intuitions of beauty and
significance. It is the same in the moral world. A man
who has trained himself in goodness comes to have certain
direct intuitions about character, about the relations between
human beings, about his own position in the world —
intuitions that are quite different from the intuitions of the
ayerage sensual man. Knowledge is always a function of
being. What we perceive and understand depends upon
what we are ; and what we are depends partly on circum-

287

ENDS AND MEANS

stances, partly, and more profoundly, on the nature of the
efforts we have made to realize our ideal and the nature of
the ideal we have tried to realize. The fact that knowing
depends upon being leads, of course, to an immense amount
of misunderstanding. The meaning of words, for example,
changes profoundly according to the character and experi¬
ences of the user. Thus, to the saint, words like ‘love,’
‘charity,* ‘compassion’ mean something quite different
from what they mean to the ordinary man. Again, to the
ordinary man, Spinoza’s statement that ‘blessedness is not
the reward of virtue, but is virtue itself’ seems simply
untrue. Being virtuous is, for him, a most tedious and
distressing process. But it is clear that to someone who
has trained himself in goodness, virtue really is blessedness,
while the life of the ordinary man, with its petty vices and
its long spells of animal thoughtlessness and insentience,
seems a real torture. In view of the fact that knowing is
conditioned by being and that being can be profoundly
modified by training, we are justified in ignoring most of
the arguments by which non-mystics have sought to dis¬
credit the experience of mystics. The being of a colour¬
blind man is such that he is not competent to pass judgment
on a painting. The colour-blind man cannot be educated
into seeing colours, and in this respect he is different from
the Indian musician, who begins by finding European
symphonies merely deafening and bewildering, but can be
trained, if he so desires, to perceive the beauties of this
kind of music. Similarly, the being of a non-mystical
person is such that he cannot understand the nature of the
mystic’s intuitions. Like the Indian musician, however, he
is at liberty, if he so chooses, to have some kind of direct
experience of what at present he does not understand. This
training is one which he will certainly find extremely
tedious; for it involves, first, the leading of a life of
constant awareness and unremitting moral effort, second,

288

BELIEFS

steady practice in the technique of meditation, which is
probably about as difficult as the technique of violin-play¬
ing. But, however tedious, the training can be undertaken
by anyone who wishes to do so. Those who have not
undertaken the training can have no knowledge of the
kind of experiences open to those who have undertaken it
and are as little justified in denying the validity of those
direct intuitions of an ultimate spiritual reality, at once
transcendent and immanent, as were the Pisan professors
who denied, on a priori grounds, the validity of Galileo’s
direct intuition (made possible by the telescope) of the fact
that Jupiter has several moons.

The validity of the mystical experience is often questioned
on the ground that the mystics of each religion have direct
intuition only of the particular deities they are accustomed
to worship. This is only partially true. There are good
mystics and bad mystics, just as there are good and bad
artists. The great majority of artists are, and always have
been, bad or indifferent; and the same is probably true of
the majority of mystics. Significantly enough it is always
among those mystics, whom qualified critics regard as
second-rate, that the intuitions of ultimate reality take a
particularized form. To the mystics who are generally
regarded as the best of their kind, ultimate reality does
not appear under the aspect of the local divinities. It
appears as a spiritual reality so far beyond particular form
or personality that nothing can be predicated of it.

‘The atman is silence,’ is what the Hindus say of ultimate
spiritual reality. The only language that can convey any
idea about the nature of this reality is the language of
negation, of paradox, of extravagant exaggeration. The
pseudo-Dionysius speaks of the * ray of the divine darkness,’
of ‘the super-lucent darkness of silence’ and of the necessity
to ‘leave behind the senses and the intellectual operations
and all things known by sense and intellect.’ ‘If anyone,’
T 289

ENDS AND MEANS

he writes, ‘seeing God, understands what he has seen, he
has not seen God.’ ‘ Nescio , nescio ,’ was what St. Bernard
wrote of the ultimate reality; ‘ neti, neti,' was Yajnavalkya’s
verdict at the other side of the world. ‘I know not, I know
not: not so, not so.’ We are a long way from particularized
Hindu or Christian divinities.

The biography of most of the first-class Christian mystics
is curiously similar. Brought up to believe in the person¬
ality of the triune God and in the existence and ubiquitous
presence of other divine persons, such as the Virgin and the
saints, they begin their mystical career by entering, as they
suppose, into relations with supernatural personalities.
Then, as they advance further along the path — and all the
mystics are agreed that this process is genuinely an advance
— they find that their visions disappear, that their awareness
of a personality fades, that the emotional outpourings which
were appropriate when they seemed to be in the presence of
a person, become utterly inappropriate and finally give place
to a state in which there is no emotion at all. For many
Christian mystics this process has been extremely distress¬
ing. The anguish of losing contact with personality — of
having to abandon the traditional beliefs, constitutes what
St. John of the Cross calls the Night of the Senses, and it
would seem that the same anguish is an element of that still
more frightful desolation, the Night of the Spirit. St. John
of the Cross considers that all true mystics must necessarily
pass through this terrible dark night. So far as strictly
orthodox Christians are concerned, he is probably right.
In this context, a most valuable document is the Life of Marie
Lataste.1 Marie Lataste was an uneducated peasant girl,
completely ignorant of the history of mysticism. She
begins by having visions of the Virgin and of Christ. Her
mystical experience at this period consists essentially of
emotional relationships with divine persons. In the course
1 Summarized in Miss Tillyard’s Spiritual Exercises , p. 202.

290

BELIEFS

of time the sense of a personal presence leaves her. She
feels lonely and abandoned. It is the dark night of the
soul. In the end, however, she comes to understand that
this new form of experience — the imageless and emotion¬
less cognition of some great impersonal force — is superior
to the old and represents a closer approach to ultimate
reality. Marie Lataste’s case is particularly interesting,
because her ignorance of mystical literature precludes the
possibility that she deliberately or unconsciously imitated
any other mystic. Her experience was wholly her own.
Brought up in the traditional belief that God is a person,
she gradually discovers by direct intuition that he is not a
person; and for a time, at least, the discovery causes her
considerable distress. For orthodox Christians, I repeat,
the dark night of the soul would seem to be an unescapable
horror.

Significantly enough this particular form of spiritual
anguish is not experienced by unorthodox Christians, nor
by those non-Christian mystics who profess a religion that
regards God as impersonal. For example, that most
remarkable of the later mediaeval mystics, the author of
The Cloud of Unknowing , makes no mention of any phase
of spiritual distress. The fact is that he has no reason to
be distressed. From the first his preoccupation is with God
the Father rather than with God the Son; and from the
first he assumes that God is impersonal. He is therefore
never called upon to make any excruciating abandonment
of cherished beliefs. The doctrine with which he starts out
is actually confirmed by the direct intuition of uldmate
reality which comes to him in his moments of mystical
experience. Similarly, we never, so far as I know, hear
anything about the dark Night of the Senses in the litera¬
ture of Buddhist or Hindu mysticism. Here again the
belief with which the oriental mystic sets out is in accord
with the testimony of his own experience. He has no

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ENDS AND MEANS

treasured belief to give up ; therefore enlightenment entails
for him no spiritual anguish.

All the writers in the great tradition of Christian mystical
theology have insisted on the necessity of purging the mind,
during meditation on the ultimate reality, of all images.
From Clement of Alexandria, who died at the beginning
of the third century and who was the first Christian writer
on mystical theology, down to St. John of the Cross in the
sixteenth, the tradition is unbroken. It is agreed that the
attempt to think of God in terms of images, to conceive
ultimate reality as having form or a nature describable in
words, is foredoomed to failure. In the latter part of the
sixteenth century there was a complete reversal of tradition.
The subject has been treated with a wealth of learned detail
by Dom John Chapman in the admirable essay on Roman
Catholic Mysticism, which is printed in Hastings’ Ency¬
clopaedia of Religion and Ethics , and it is unnecessary for
me to do more than briefly summarize his conclusions.
‘At this very time (the end of the sixteenth century) the
dogmatic theologians were rising up against mystical theo¬
logy. The great Dominicans, following the example of
St. Thomas in his Summa, ignored it; the great Jesuits
denied its very existence.’ (The Jesuits, of course, had
been brought up on Ignatius’s spiritual exercises in which
every effort is made, not to suppress the image-forming
phantasy — that worst obstacle, according to St. John of
the Cross and all the earlier mystics, in the way of a genuine
intuition of ultimate reality — but to develop it, if possible,
to the pitch of hallucination.) By the middle of the seven¬
teenth century Cardinal Bona could state that ‘pure prayer
exercised without phantasmata is universally denied by the
scholastics.’ At the same time, ‘art began no longer to
represent the saints as kneeling calmly in adoration, but as
waving their arms and stretching their necks and rolling
their eyes, in ecstasies of sensuous longing, while they tear

292

BELIEFS

aside their clothes to relieve their burning bosoms.’ Con¬
templation, meanwhile, has come to be regarded as ‘mainly
the sensible tasting of mysteries, especially of the Passion/
(It is worth remarking that ‘ the tendency to substitute for
a superrational concentration of will a subrational expan¬
sion of feeling* began, at any rate in the sphere of religion,
not in the eighteenth century, as Babbitt has said, but in
the seventeenth.) In this unpropitious atmosphere mys¬
ticism could not thrive; and, as Dom Chapman points
out, there has been an almost complete dearth of Catholic
mystics from the late sixteenth century down to the present
day. Significant in this context is the remark made by
Father Bede Frost, in his Art of Mental Prayer , to the effect
that the great age of sacramentalism began in the nine¬
teenth century. During the Middle Ages far less stress was
laid on sacramental religion than is laid at the present time,
far more on preaching and, above all, spiritual exercises
and contemplation. An unsympathetic observer would be
justified in pointing to the fact as a symptom of degenera¬
tion. A religion which once laid emphasis on the need to
educate men’s wills and train their souls for direct com¬
munion with ultimate reality, and which now attaches
supreme importance to the celebration of Sacraments (sup¬
posed in some way to cause the infusion of divine grace) 1
and to the performance of rituals calculated to induce in
the participants a ‘subrational expansion of feeling,’ is
certainly not progressing. It is becoming worse, not
better.

Systematic training in recollection and meditation makes
possible the mystical experience, which is a direct intuition
of ultimate reality. At all times and in every part of the
world, mystics of the first order have always agreed that
this'Nultimate reality, apprehended in the process of medita-

1 The Council of Trent anathematized * si quis dixerit sacramenta
novae legis non continere gratiam.’

293

ENDS AND MEANS

tion, is essentially impersonal. This direct intuition of an
impersonal spiritual reality, underlying all being, is in
accord with the findings of the majority of the world’s
philosophers.

‘There is,’ writes Professor Whitehead, in Religion in
the Making , ‘a large concurrence in the negative doctrine
that the religious experience does not include any direct
intuition of a definite person, or individual. . . . The
evidence for the assertion of a general, though not univer¬
sal, concurrence in the doctrine of no direct vision of a
personal God, can only be found by a consideration of
the religious thought of the civilized world. . . . Through¬
out India and China, religious thought, so far as it has
been interpreted in precise form, disclaims the intuition of
ultimate personality substantial to the universe. This is
true of Confucian philosophy, Buddhist philosophy and
Hindu philosophy. There may be personal embodiments,
but the substratum is impersonal. Christian theology has
also, in the main, adopted the position that there is no
direct intuition of such a personal substratum for the
world. It maintains the doctrine of a personal God as a
truth, but holds that our belief in it is based upon in¬
ference.’ There seems, however, to be no cogent reason
why, from the existing evidence, we should draw such an
inference. Moreover, as I have pointed out in the pre¬
ceding chapter, the practical results of drawing such an
inference are good only up to a point; beyond that point
they are very often extremely bad.

We are now in a position to draw a few tentative and
fragmentary conclusions about the nature of the world
and our relation to it and to one another. To the casual
observer, the world seems to be made up of great numbers
of independent existents, some of which possess life and
some consciousness. From very early times philosophers
suspected that this common-sense view was, in part at least,

294

BELIEFS

illusory. More recently investigators, trained in the dis¬
cipline of mathematical physics and equipped with instru¬
ments of precision, have made observations from which it
could be inferred that all the apparently independent
existents in the world were built up of a limited number
of patterns of identical units of energy. Ap ultimate
physical identity underlies the apparent physical diversity
of the world. Moreover, all apparently independent
existents are in fact interdependent. Meanwhile the mystics
had shown that investigators, trained in the discipline of
recollection and meditation, could obtain direct experience
of a spiritual unity underlying the apparent diversity of
independent consciousness. They made it clear that what
seemed to be the ultimate fact of personality was in reality
not an ultimate fact, and that it was possible for individuals
to transcend the limitations of personality and to merge
their private consciousness into a greater, impersonal
consciousness underlying the personal mind.

Some have denied the very possibility of non-personal
consciousness. McTaggart, for example, asserts that ‘there
cannot be experience which is not experienced by a self,
because it seems evident, not as part of the meaning of
the terms, but as a synthetic truth about experience. This
truth is ultimate. It cannot be defended against attacks,
but it seems beyond doubt. The more clearly we realize
the nature of experience, or of knowledge, volition and
emotion, the more clearly, it is submitted, does it appear
that any of them are impossible except as the experience
of a self.’ This brings us back, once more, to the con¬
nection between knowing and being. To those on the
common levels of being, it does indeed ‘seem evident, as
a synthetic truth about experience,’ that all experience
must be experienced by a self. For such people ‘this truth
is ultimate.’ But it is not ultimate to people who have
chosen to undertake the mystic’s training in virtue and in

295

ENDS AND MEANS

recollection and in meditation. For these it is evident,
‘as a synthetic truth about experience,’ legitimately inferred
from the empirical facts of their direct intuition, that there
is an experience which is not the personal experience of a
self. Such experience is not properly emotion, nor volition,
nor even knowledge of the ordinary kind. Emotion,
volition and knowledge are the forms of experience known
to selves on the common levels of being. The experience
known to selves who choose to fulfil the ethical and
intellectual conditions upon which it is possible for an
individual to pass to another level of being, is not their
own emotion, their own volition, their own knowledge,
but an unnamed and perhaps indescribable consciousness
of a different kind, a consciousness in which the subject-
object relation no longer exists and which no longer belongs
to the experiencing self.

The physical world of our daily experience is a private
universe quarried out of a total reality which the physicists
infer to be far greater than it. This private universe is
different, not only from the real world, whose existence
we are able to infer, even though we cannot directly
apprehend it, but also from the private universes in¬
habited by other animals — universes which we can never
penetrate, but concerning whose nature we can, as Von
Uexkull has done, make interesting speculative guesses.
Each type of living creature inhabits a universe whose
nature is determined and whose boundaries are imposed
by the special inadequacies of its sense organs and its
intelligence. In man, intelligence has been so far developed
that he is able to infer the existence and even, to some
extent, the nature of the real world outside his private
universe. The nature of the sense organs and intelligence
of living beings is imposed by biological necessity or con¬
venience. The instruments of knowledge are good enough
to enable their owners to survive. Less inadequate instru-

296

BELIEFS

ments of knowledge might not only lead to no biological
advantage but might actually constitute a biological handicap.
Individual human beings have been able to transcend the
limitations of man’s private universe only to the extent
that they are relieved from biological pressure. An
individual is relieved from biological pressure in two
ways: from without, thanks to the efforts of others, and
from within, thanks to his own efforts. If he is to transcend
the limitations of man’s private universe he must be a
member of a community which gives him protection
against the inclemencies of the environment and makes it
easy for him to supply his physical wants. But this is not
enough. He must also train himself in the art of being
dispassionate and disinterested, must cultivate intellectual
curiosity for its own sake and not for what he, as an
animal, can get out of it.

The modem conception of man’s intellectual relationship
to the universe was anticipated by the Buddhist doctrine
that desire is the source of illusion. To the extent that it
has overcome desire, a mind is free from illusion. This is
true not only of the man of science, but also of the artist
and the philosopher. Only the disinterested mind can
transcend common sense and pass beyond the boundaries
of animal or average-sensual human life. The mystic
exhibits disinterestedness in the highest degree possible to
human beings and is therefore able to transcend ordinary
limitations more completely than the man of science, the
artist or the philosopher. That which he discovers beyond
the frontiers of the average sensual man’s universe is a
spiritual reality underlying and uniting all apparently
separate existents — a reality with which he can merge
himself and from which he can draw moral and even
physical powers which, by ordinary standards, can only
be described as supernormal.

The ultimate reality discoverable by those who choose

297

ENDS AND MEANS

to modify their being, so that they can have direct know¬
ledge of it, is not, as we have seen, a personality. Since
it is not personal, it is illegitimate to attribute to it ethical

Dualities. ‘God is not good,’ said Eckhart. ‘I am good.*
roodness is the means by which men and women can
overcome the illusion of being completely independent
existents and can raise themselves to a level of being upon
which it becomes possible, by recollection and meditation,
to realize the fact of their oneness with ultimate reality,
to know and in some measure actually associate themselves
with it. The ultimate reality is ‘the peace of God which
passeth all understanding’; goodness is the way by which
it can be approached. ‘Finite beings,’ in the words of
Royce, ‘are always such as they are in virtue of an
inattention which at present blinds them to their actual
relations to God and to one another.’ That inattention is
the fruit, in Buddhist language, of desire. We fail to
attend to our true relations with ultimate reality and,
through ultimate reality, with our fellow-beings, because
we prefer to attend to our animal nature and to the business
of getting on in the world. That we can never completely
ignore the animal in us or its biological needs is obvious.
Our separateness is not wholly an illusion. The element of
specificity in things is a brute fact of experience. Diversity
cannot be reduced to complete identity even in scientific
and philosophical theory, still less in life which is lived with
bodies, that is to say, with particular pattemings of the
ultimately identical units of energy. It is impossible in the
nature of things, that no attention should be given to the
animal in us; but in the circumstances of civilized life, it is
certainly unnecessary to give all or most of our attention
to it. Goodness is the method by which we divert our
attention from this singularly wearisome topic of our
animality and our individual separateness. Recollection
and meditation assist goodness in two ways : by producing,

298

BELIEFS

in Babbitt’s words, ‘a suprarational concentration of will*
and by making it possible for the mind to realize, not only
theoretically, but also by direct intuition, that the private
universe of the average sensual man is not identical with
the universe as a whole. Conversely, of course, goodness
aids meditation by giving detachment from animality and
so making it possible for the mind to pay attention to its
actual relationship with ultimate reality and to other
individuals. Goodness, meditation, the mystical experience
and the ultimate impersonal reality discovered in mystical
experience are organically related. This fact disposes of
the fears expressed by Dr. Albert Schweitzer in his recent
book on Indian thought. Mysticism, he contends, is the
correct world view ; but, though correct, it is unsatisfactory
in ethical content. The ultimate reality of the world is not
moral (‘God is not good’) and the mystic who unites
himself with ultimate reality is uniting himself with a non-
moral being, therefore is not himself moral. But this is
mere verbalism and ignores the actual facts of experience.
It is impossible for the mystic to pay attention to his real
relation to God and to his fellows, unless he has previously
detached his attention from his animal nature and the
business of being socially successful. But he cannot detach
his attention from these things except by the consistent and
conscious practice of the highest morality. God is not
good ; but if I want to have even the smallest knowledge
of God, I must be good at least in some slight measure;
and if I want as full a knowledge of God as it is possible
for human beings to have, I must be as good as it is possible
for human beings to be. Virtue is the essential preliminary
to the mystical experience. And this is not all. There is
not even any theoretical incompatibility between an ultimate
reality, which is impersonal and therefore not moral, and
the existence of a moral order on the human level. Scientific
investigation has shown that the world is a diversity under-

299

ENDS AND MEANS

lain by an identity of physical substance; the mystical
experience testifies to the existence of a spiritual unity
underlying the diversity of separate consciousnesses.
Concerning the relation between the underlying physical
unity and the underlying spiritual unity it is hard to
express an opinion. Nor is it necessary, in the present
context, that we should express one. For our present
purposes the important fact is that it is possible to detect
a physical and a spiritual unity underlying the independent
existents (to some extent merely apparent, to some extent
real, at any rate for beings on our plane of existence), of
which our common-sense universe is composed. Now, it
is a fact of experience that we can either emphasize our
separateness from other beings and the ultimate reality of
the world or emphasize our oneness with them and it.
To some extent at least, our will is free in this matter.
Human beings are creatures who, in so far as they are
animals and persons, tend to regard themselves as inde¬
pendent existents, connected at most by purely biological
ties, but who, in so far as they rise above animality and
personality, are able to perceive that they are interrelated
parts of physical and spiritual wholes incomparably greater
than themselves. For such beings the fundamental moral
commandment is: You shall realize your unity with all
being. But men cannot realize their unity with others and
with ultimate reality unless they practise the virtues of love
and understanding. Love, compassion and understanding
or intelligence — these are the primary virtues in the ethical
system, the virtues organically correlated with what may
be called the scientific-mystical conception of the world.
Ultimate reality is impersonal and non-ethical; but if we
would realize our true relations with ultimate reality and
our fellow-beings, we must practise morality and (since
no personality can learn to transcend itself unless it is
reasonably free from external compulsion) respect the

300

BELIEFS

personality of others. Belief in a personal, moral God has
led only too frequently to theoretical dogmatism and
practical intolerance — to a consistent refusal to respect
personality and to the commission in the name of the
divinely moral person of every kind of iniquity.

‘The fact of the instability of evil,’ in Professor White¬
head’s words, ‘is the moral order of the world.’ Evil is
that which makes for separateness ; and that which makes
for separateness is self-destructive. This self-destruction
of evil may be sudden and violent, as when murderous
hatred results in a conflict that leads to the death of the
hater; it may be gradual, as when a degenerative process
results in impotence or extinction ; or it may be reformative,
as when a long course of evil-doing results in all concerned
becoming so sick of destruction and degeneration that
they decide to change their ways, thus transforming evil
into good.

The evolutionary history of life clearly illustrates the
instability of evil in the sense in which it has been defined
above. Biological specialization may be regarded as a
tendency on the part of a species to insist on its separate¬
ness; ‘and the result of specialization, as we have seen, is
either negatively disastrous, in the sense that it precludes
the possibility of further biological progress, or positively
disastrous, in the sense that it leads to the extinction of
the species. In the same way intra-specific competition
may be regarded as the expression of a tendency on the
part of related individuals to insist on their separateness
and independence ; the effects of intra-specific competition
are, as we have seen, almost wholly bad. Conversely, the
qualities which have led to biological progress are the
qualities which make it possible for individual beings
to escape from their separateness — intelligence and the
tendency to co-operate. Love and understanding are valu¬
able even on the biological level. Hatred, unawareness,

301

ENDS AND MEANS

stupidity and all that makes for increase of separateness
are the qualities that, as a matter of historical fact, have
led either to the extinction of a species, or to its becoming
a living fossil, incapable of making further biological
progress.

302

Chapter XV
ETHICS

EVERY cosmology has its correlated ethic. The ethic
that is correlated with the cosmology outlined in the
preceding chapter has, as its fundamental principles, these
propositions: Good is that which makes for unity; Evil
is that which makes for separateness. Relating these
terms to the phraseology employed in the first chapters,
we can say that separateness is attachment and that without
non-attachment no individual can achieve unity either
with God or, through God, with other individuals. In
the paragraphs that follow I shall try to illustrate the
application of our ethical principles in life.

Good and evil exist on the plane of the body and its
sensations, on the plane of the emotions, and on the plane
of the intellect. In practice these planes cannot be separ¬
ated. Events occurring on one of the planes have their
counterpart in events occurring upon the other planes of
our being. It is always necessary to bear this fact in
mind when we classify phenomena as physical, emotional
or intellectual. But provided that we bear it in mind,
there is no harm in our speaking in this way. This par¬
ticular classification, like every other, fails to do full
justice to the complexities of real life; but it has the
compensating merit of being very convenient.

Let us begin by considering good, and evil on the plane
of the body. In general it may be said that any very
intense physical sensation, whether pleasurable or painful,
tends to cause the individual who feels it to identify himself
with that sensation. He ceases even to be himself and

303

ENDS AND MEANS

becomes only a part of his body — the pain-giving or
pleasure-giving organ. Self-transcendence thus becomes
doubly difficult — though of course by no means impossible,
as is proved by many examples of equanimity and non¬
attachment under suffering and under intense enjoyment.
In general, however, excess of pain as of pleasure makes
for separateness. All the oriental contemplatives are
emphatic in their insistence on bodily health as a condition
of spiritual union with ultimate reality. Among Christians
there are two schools of thought — that which recommends
mortification and that which stresses the importance of
health. Pascal may be cited as a representative of the
first school, and the anonymous author of The Cloud of
Unknowing as a representative of the second. For Pascal,
sickness is the truly Christian condition; for, by mechanic¬
ally freeing men from some, at least, of the passions, it
delivers them from all manner of temptations and dis¬
tractions, and prepares them for living the kind of life
which, according to Christian ethical theory, they ought
to live. Pascal ignores the fact that sickness may create
as many temptations and distractions as it removes —
distractions in the form of discomfort and pain, temptations
in the form of an almost irresistible impulse to think
exclusively of oneself. There is, however, an element of
truth in the Pascalian doctrine. When not excessive,
sickness or physical defect may act as a reminder that
‘the things of this world’ are not quite so important as
the animal and the social climber in us imagine them to be.
A mind which has made this discovery and which then
succeeds, as a result of suitable training, in ignoring the
distractions of pain and overcoming the temptation to
think exclusively of its sick body, has gone far to
achieve that ‘suprarational concentration of the will,’
at which the religious self-education aims. In proclaim¬
ing the value of sickness, Pascal is advocating the

3°4

ETHICS

physiological method of training through the mastery of
pain. We have seen already that this method is a
dangerous one. Only too frequently pain is not mastered,
but achieves mastery — leads to attachment rather than
non-attachment.

This being so, we can understand why the author of
The Cloud of Unknowing should have taken the opposite
view to Pascal’s. For him, sickness is a serious obstacle in
the way of true devotion to God and must be reckoned
accordingly as a form of sin. The passage in which he
comments on certain symptoms of what we should now
call ‘neurosis’ is of such interest that I make no excuse
for quoting it in its entirety. ‘Some men,’ he writes, ‘are
so cumbered in nice curious customs in bodily bearing
that when they shall aught hear, they shall writhe their
heads on one side quaintly, and up with the chin: they
gape with their mouths as they should hear with their
mouth and not with their ears. Some when they should
speak point with their fingers, or on their own breasts, or
on theirs that they speak to. Some can neither sit still,
stand still, nor lie still, unless they be either wagging
with their feet, or else somewhat doing with their hands.
Some row with their arms in time of their speaking, as
they needed to swim over a great water. Some be ever
more smiling and laughing at every other word that they
speak, as they were giggling girls and nice japing jugglers.
... I say not that all these unseemly practices be great
sins in themselves, nor yet all these that do them be great
sinners themselves. But I say if that these unseemly and
unordained practices be governors of that man that doth
them, insomuch that he may not leave them when he will,
then I say that they be tokens of pride and curiosity of
wit, and of unordained showing and covetyse of knowing.
And specially they be very tokens of unstableness of heart
and unrestfulness of mind, and specially of the lacking of
u 305

ENDS AND MEANS

the work of this book ’ (i.e. the work of meditation as a
training for the mystic experience).

This assimilation of physical deficiency to sin may seem
somewhat ruthless and unfeeling. But if sin is to be
judged by its results, then, of course, the author of The
Cloud, of Unknowing is quite right in reckoning among sins
any bodily states and habits which cause a man to con¬
centrate on his own separateness, hinder him from paying
attention to his true relation with God and his fellows
and so make the conscious actualization of union with
them impossible. On the plane of the body, sickness must
generally be counted as a sin. For by sickness and pain
as well as by extreme pleasure, the body insists on its
separateness and all but compels the mind to identify
itself with it.

The saying that to him that has shall be given and from
him that has not shall be taken away even all that he has,
is a hard one; but it happens to be an extremely succinct
and accurate summary of the facts of moral life. Those
who sin physically by having some kind of bodily defect
may be made to pay for that defect in ways that are
emotional and intellectual as well as physical. Some sick
people are capable of making the almost superhuman
effort that will transform the disaster of bodily defect into
spiritual triumph. From the rest even that which they
have, intellectually and emotionally, is taken away. Why?
Because, on the plane of the body, they are among those
who have not. ‘Men may be excusable,’ says Spinoza,
‘and nevertheless miss happiness, and be tormented in
many ways. A horse is excusable for being a horse and
not a man; nevertheless he must needs be a horse and
not a man. He who cannot rule his passions, nor hold
them in check out of respect for the law, while he may
be excusable on the ground of weakness, is nevertheless
incapable of enjoying conformity of spirit and knowledge

306

ETHICS

and love of God; and he is lost inevitably.’ Weakness
may be forgiven ; but so long as it continues to be present,
no amount of forgiveness can prevent it from having the
ordinary results of weakness. These results are manifest
in the present life and, if there should be some form of
survival of bodily death, will doubtless be manifest in any
subsequent existence.

Sex is a physical activity that is also and at the same
time an emodonal and an intellectual activity. If I choose
to consider it here, it is not because I regard it as more
physical than emotional or intellectual, but merely for the
sake of convenience. It is an empirical fact of observation
and experience that sexual activities sometimes make for a
realization of the individual’s unity with another individual
and, through that other individual, with the reality of the
world; sometimes, on the contrary, for an intensification
of individual separateness. In other words, sex leads
sometimes to non-attachment and sometimes to attachment,
is sometimes good and sometimes evil.

On the plane of the body, sex is evil when it takes the
form of a physical addiction. (All that can be said in this
context about sex is true, mutatis mutandis , of the other
forms of physical addiction — to alcohol, for example, to
morphia and cocaine.) Like habit-forming drugs, habit¬
forming sex is evil because it compels the mind to identify
itself with a physical sensation and prevents it from thinking
of anything but its separate animal existence. Addiction
cannot be destroyed by satiation, but tends, if indulged, to
become more than a mere habit — a demoniac possession.
This is, of course, especially true in the case of civilized
and highly conscious individuals — individuals who ‘know
better,’ but who have nevertheless permitted themselves
to become enslaved to their addiction. For uncivilized
members of what J. D. Unwin has called ‘zoistic’ societies,
or of the zoistic strata of civilized societies, sexual addiction

3°7

ENDS AND MEANS

is merely a pleasant habit that they indulge with a good
conscience. It prevents them from putting forth that
energy that will enable them to become conscious of
themselves, to think about the strange world around them
and to achieve civilization; but as they are unaware of
the fact, they don’t mind. Not so with civilized and
self-conscious men and women. Of such people it cannot
be said that ‘they know not what they do.’ They know
only too well — know exactly what they are doing and
exactly what they are losing in the process. For them the
addiction is a real possession. The demon that inhabits
them compels them to do what they know will harm them
and what, with the best part of their being, they do not
want to do. The nature of this demoniac possession was
described, with incomparable power, by Baudelaire in the
Fleurs du Mai.

Une nuit quej’itais pres d'une affreuse Juive,

Comme au long d’un cadavre un cadavre ctendu . . .

Addiction persists — a true possession by a devil that
malignantly wills the unhappiness of its victim — even
when all physical pleasure has been lost, even in the teeth
of disgust and loathing. Like virtue, it is its own reward ;
and the reward it brings is misery and the torment of body
and mind.

Jamais vous tie pourre^ assouvir votre rage,

Et votre chatiment naitra de vos plaisirs.

Jamais un rayon frais n eclair a vos cavernes j
Par les fentes des murs des miasmes JUvreux
Filent en s'enflammant ainsi que des lanternes
Et p&nktrent vos corps de leurs parfums affreux.

L'dpre stirilite de votre jouissance
Altlre votre soif et roidit votre peau ,

308

ETHICS

Et le vent furibond de la concupiscence

Fait claquer votre chair ainsi qu'un viettx drapeau.

Loin des peuples vivants , errantes , condamnies,

A trovers les d&serts coure\ comme des loups;

Faites votre destin, dmes dlsordonnies ,

Etfuye { Vinjini que vous porte\ en vous.

The last line irresistibly recalls Royce’s phrase to the
effect that ‘finite beings are always such as they are by
virtue of an inattention which at present blinds them to
their actual relations to God and to one another.’ The
addict is blinded by his addiction to ‘the infinite that he
carries within him,’ to ‘his actual relations to God’ and
other beings. At the same time, he is generally aware, if
only by a kind of nostalgia, by a hopeless longing for what
he lacks, that ‘the infinite’ exists within him and that his
‘actual relations to God’ are those of a part to its proper
whole. He is aware of the fact and he suffers from it; and
at the same time the demon he has conjured up, that it may
possess him, deliberately increases his suffering by forcing
him ‘to fly from the infinite within him,’ to refuse, con¬
sciously and deliberately, to pay attention to ‘his actual
relations with God.’

It is not only when it takes the form of physical addiction
that sex is evil. It is also evil when it manifests itself as a
way of satisfying the lust for power or the climber’s
craving for position and social distinction. Love — and
this is true not only of sexual, but also of maternal love —
may be merely a device for imposing the lover’s will upon
the beloved. Between the Marquis de Sade, with his whips
and penknives, and the doting but tyrannous mother, who
slaves for her son in order that she may the more effectively
dominate him, there are obvious differences in method and
degree, but not a fundamental difference in kind. In such
cases, the active party, by insisting on the right to bully,

3°9

ENDS AND MEANS

command and direct, thereby insists upon his or her
separateness. At the same time, by refusing to respect
the other’s personality, the domineering lover makes it
impossible for the beloved victim to pay attention to that
'infini que vous portei en vous.' Addiction degrades only
the addict. The lust for power harms not only the person
who lusts, but also the person or persons at whose expense
the lust is satisfied. Non-attachment becomes impossible
for both parties.

Sex as a means for satisfying social vanity is only less
evil than sex as a means for satisfying the lust for power.
There are people who marry, not a person, but money,
a title, social influence. Sex here is the instrument of
avarice and ambition, passions that are in the highest
degree separative and reality-obscuring. There are others
who marry beauty or distinction for the sole purpose of
flaunting their exclusive possession of it before the eyes of
an envying world. This is a special form of the lust for
ownership, an avarice whose object is, not money, but a
human being and that human being’s socially valuable
qualities. Such lust for ownership is as blinding and as
separative as ordinary avarice, and can do almost as much
harm to the owned person as the maternally or sexually
conditioned lust for power can do to its much loved and
much tormented victim.

Sex is not always addiction, is not always used as an
instrument of domination or as a means for expressing
vanity and snobbishness. It is also and at least as frequently
the method whereby unpossessive and unselfish individuals
achieve union with one another and indirectly with the
world about them. ‘All the world loves a lover’; and,
conversely, a lover loves all the world. ‘That violence
whereby sometimes a man doteth upon one creature is but
a little spark of that love, even towards all, which lurketh
in his nature. When we dote upon the perfections and

310

ETHICS

beauties of some one creature, we do not love that too
much, but other things too little. Never was anything in
this world loved too much, but many things have been
loved in a false way, and all in too short a measure.’
Traherne might have added (what many poets and novelists
have remarked) that, when ‘we dote upon the perfections
and beauties of some one creature,’ we frequently find our¬
selves moved to love other creatures. Moreover, to be in
love is, in many cases, to have achieved a state of being,
in which it becomes possible to have direct intuition of
the essentially lovely nature of ultimate reality. ‘What
a world would this be, were everything beloved as it
ought to be!’ For many people, everything is beloved as
it ought to be, only when they are in love with ‘some
one creature.’ The cynical wisdom of the folk affirms
that love is blind. But in reality, perhaps, the
blind are those who are not in love and who therefore
fail to perceive how beautiful the world is and how
adorable.

We must now consider very briefly the relation of
sexual activity to mental activity in individuals and to the
cultural condition of society. This subject was discussed
by the late Dr. J. D. Unwin, whose monumental Sex and
Culture is a work of the highest importance. Unwin’s
conclusions, which are based upon an enormous wealth of
carefully sifted evidence, may be summed up as follows.
All human societies are in one or another of four cultural
conditions: zoistic, manistic, deistic, rationalistic. Of
these societies the zoistic displays the least amount of
mental and social energy, the rationalistic the most. In¬
vestigation shows that the societies exhibiting the least
amount of energy are those where pre-nuptial continence
is not imposed and where the opportunities for sexual
indulgence after marriage are greatest. The cultural con¬
dition of a society rises in exact proportion as it imposes

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ENDS AND MEANS

pre-nuptial and post-nuptial restraints upon sexual oppor¬
tunity.

‘All the deisdc societies insisted on pre-nuptial chastity;
conversely all the societies which insisted on pre-nuptial
chastity were in the deistic condition.

‘Is there any causal relationship between the com¬
pulsory continence and the thought, reflection and energy
which produced the change from one cultural condition
to another?

‘One thing is certain: if a causal relation exists, the
continence must have caused the thought, not the thought
the continence.’

Again, ‘the power of thought is inherent; similarly the
power to display social energy is inherent; but neither
mental nor social energy can be manifested except under
certain conditions.’ These conditions arise when sexual
opportunity is reduced to a minimum. Civilized societies
may be divided into different strata, representing every
type of cultural condition from zoistic to rationalistic.
‘The group within the society which suffers the greatest
continence displays the greatest energy and dominates the
society.’ The dominating group determines the behaviour
of the society as a whole. So long as at least one stratum
of a society imposes pre-nuptial continence upon its
members and limits post-nuptial sexual opportunity by
means of strict monogamy, the society as a whole will
behave as a civilized society.

The energy produced by sexual continence starts as
‘expansive energy’ and results in the society becoming
aggressive, conquering its less energetic neighbours, sending
out colonies, developing its commerce and the like. But
‘when the rigorous tradition (of sexual restraint) is in¬
herited by a number of generations, the energy becomes
productive.’ Productive energy does not spend itself ex¬
clusively in expansion ; it also goes into science, speculation,

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ETHICS

art, social reform. Where productive energy persists for
some time, a factor which Dr. Unwin calls ‘human entropy*
comes into play. Human entropy is the inherent tendency,
manifested as soon as the suitable social conditions are
created, towards increased refinement and accuracy. ‘No
society can display productive social energy unless a new
generation inherits a social system under which sexual
opportunity is reduced to a minimum. If such a system
be preserved a richer and yet richer tradition will be
created, refined by human entropy.*

As a matter of brute historical fact, no civilized society
has tolerated for very long the limitation to a minimum
of its sexual opportunities. Within a few generations, the
rules imposing absolute pre-nuptial continence upon
females and absolutely monogamous forms of marriage
are relaxed. When this happens, the society or the class
loses its energy and is replaced by another society, or
another class, whose members have made themselves
energetic by practising sexual continence. ‘Sometimes,’
writes Dr. Unwin, ‘a man has been heard to declare that
he wishes both to enjoy the advantages of high culture
and to abolish compulsory continence. The inherent nature
of the human organism, however, seems to be such that
these desires are incompatible, even contradictory. . . .
Any human society is free to choose, either to display
great energy or to enjoy sexual freedom; the evidence is
that it cannot do both for more than one generation.’

We have seen that, as a matter of historical fact, no
society has consented to retain the tradition of pre-nuptial
continence and absolute monogamy for very long. But it
is also a matter of historical fact that these traditions have
always hitherto been associated with the oppression of
women and children. In deistic societies, wives have been
regarded as slaves or mere chattels, having no legal entity.
Custom and law have placed them at the mercy of their

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ENDS AND MEANS

husbands. Discussing this fact, Dr. Unwin hazards the
opinion ‘that it was the unequal fate of women, not the
compulsory continence, that caused the downfall of absolute
monogamy. No society has yet succeeded in regulating
the relations between the sexes in such a way as to enable
sexual opportunity to remain at a minimum for an extended
period. The inference I draw from the historical evidence
is that, if ever such a result should be desired, the
sexes must first be placed on a footing of complete
legal equality.’

In this very brief summary I have certainly done much
less than justice to Dr. Unwin’s very remarkable book;
but though doing it less than justice, I do not think that
I have misrepresented its main conclusions. The evidence
for these conclusions is so full, that it is difficult to see
how they can be rejected. They are conclusions which
will certainly seem unpalatable to the middle-aged relics
of a liberal generation. Such liberals are liberals, not only
politically, but also in the sense in which Shakespeare’s
‘liberal shepherds’ (the ones who called wild arums by a
grosser name than dead-men’s fingers) were liberal. They
have been ‘heard to declare,’ very frequently and loudly,
that they ‘wish to enjoy the advantages of high culture
and to abolish compulsory continence.’ Living as they
do upon the capital of energy accumulated by a previous
generation of monogamists, whose wives came to them as
virgines intactae , they can make the best of both worlds
during their own lifetime. Dr. Unwin’s researches have
made it certain, however, that it will be impossible for their
children to go on making the best of both worlds.

If Dr. Unwin’s conclusions are well founded — and it is
difficult to believe that they are not — how do they fit
into our general ethical scheme? The first significant fact
to be noticed is that ‘the continence caused the thought,
not the thought the continence.’ Zoistic societies live in a

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ETHICS

condition of animal solidarity. In Dr. Unwin’s words,
‘we begin with a society in which all the individuals are
locked together by forces we do not understand; such a
society displays no energy.’ Now, this animal solidarity
has certain merits; it is preferable, for example, to the
animal individualism of unrestricted intra-specific com¬
petition. But these merits are sub-ethical ; in other words,
animal solidarity is below good and evil. People on the
zoistic level are too much preoccupied with, and too
completely de-energized by, unrestricted sexual indulgence
to be able to pay attention to ‘their actual relations with
God and with one another.’ Awareness is the condition
of any moral behaviour superior to that of animals. The
individual cannot transcend himself unless he first learns
to be conscious of himself and of his relations with other
selves and with the world. A measure of sexual continence
is the pre-condition of awareness and of other forms of
mental energy, conative and emotional as well as cognitive.
But the pre-condition of moral behaviour need not itself
be moral. As a matter of historical fact, the energy
released by sexual continence has frequently been directed
towards thoroughly immoral ends. Mental and social
energy is comparable to the energy of falling water; it
can be used for any purpose that men choose to put it to
— for bullying the weak and exploiting the poor just as
well as for exploring the secrets of nature, for creating
masterpieces of art or for establishing union with ultimate
reality.

Chastity is one of the major virtues inasmuch as, without
chastity, societies lack energy and individuals are con¬
demned to perpetual unawareness, attachment and animality.
In another sense, however, chastity can rank only as a
minor virtue; for, along with such other minor virtues as
courage, prudence, temperance and the like, it can be
used solely as a means for increasing the efficiency of

315

ENDS AND MEANS

evil-doing. Unless they are directed by the major virtues
of love and intelligence, the minor virtues are not virtues
at all, but aids to wickedness. Historically, puritanism has
been associated with militarism and capitalism, with war
and persecution and economic exploitation, with every
form of power-seeking and cruelty. Chastity is not
necessarily correlated with charity; on the contrary, the
human organism is so constituted that there would seem
to be a natural correlation between compulsory continence
and energy that is malevolent at least as often as it is well-
intentioned. (On the political results of this correlation
Dr. Vergin’ s Sub-conscious Europe may be consulted; the
book contains an over-emphatic and therefore somewhat
distorted statement of a good case.) This natural and,
I might almost say, physiological tendency for chastity to
be associated with uncharitableness is manifested not only
during the period when the energy created by sexual
restraint is ‘expansive,’ but also, though perhaps with
diminished intensity, when it is ‘productive.’

Chastity, then, is the necessary pre-condition to any
kind of moral life superior to that of the animal. At the
same time, the energy created by chastity has a natural
tendency to be, on the whole, more evil than good. By
fulfilling the conditions upon which, and upon which
alone, the higher moral life is possible, we transform our
nature in such a way that it becomes easier for us to behave
immorally than to behave morally. Our human nature is
such that, if we are to realize the highest ethical ideals, we
must do something which automatically makes the realiza¬
tion of those ideals more difficult. Historically, pro¬
gressiveness has always been associated with aggressiveness
— the potentiality of greater good with the actuality of
greater evil. This association ‘comes naturally’ to beings
constituted as we are, and can be broken only as the result
of deliberate choice, directed by the highest ideals and the

316

ETHICS

fullest knowledge of facts. As usual, the remedy is to be
sought in awareness and good will. Only by consistently
applying the major virtues of charity and intelligence can
we prevent the minor, but indispensable, virtue of chastity
from filling the world with actual evil as well as potential
good. Dr. Unwin suggests that the modern world is con¬
fronted by only two alternatives: it may choose to be
continent and energetic; or it may prefer sexual indulgence
to mental and social energy. It would be truer to say
that there are three choices. First of all, we can increase pre¬
nuptial and post-nuptial sexual opportunity, in which case
our mental and social energy will decline. Alternatively,
we can tighten up the system of sexual restraint, with a
view to increasing the amount, without improving the
ethical quality, of available social energy. This is the
policy which is at present being pursued by the dictators
of all the totalitarian states. Empirically and by a kind of
rule of thumb, these men know very clearly that there is a
correlation between puritanism and energy — just as they
know (as was pointed out in the chapter on Education)
that there is a correlation between authoritarian discipline
in youth and a militaristic psychology in later life. By
combining a system of increased sexual restraint with a
system of authoritarian education, the present rulers of
totalitarian societies are providing themselves and their
successors with a new generation of highly energetic
militarists. Significantly enough, in Germany and Italy
the tightening up of sexual restraints has been accom¬
panied by a lowering of the status of women. In the
past, as Dr. Unwin has pointed out, absolute pre-nuptial
chastity and absolute monogamy have always been
associated with the subjection of women. Hitler and
Mussolini are merely employing the old means to produce
the old end — an increase of energy. This energy, as we
have seen, has a natural tendency to take undesirable

317

ENDS AND MEANS

forms; but, not content with this spontaneous evil, the
dictators are using all the means at their disposal to direct
their subjects* energy along the channels of aggressive
imperialism.

Finally, there is a third alternative — an alternative which
has never been tried before. We can retain pre-nuptial
chastity and absolute monogamy, at any rate for the
ruling classes of our societies; but instead of associating
these practices with the subjection of women, we can make
women the legal equals of men. In this way, as Dr.
Unwin suggests, and in this way only, will it be possible
to avoid that revolt against chastity which, in the past, has
resulted in the decline of once energetic societies. By
making compulsory chastity tolerable, such measures will
prolong the period during which a society produces
energy — will prolong it, perhaps, indefinitely. But they
will do little or nothing to improve the ethical quality of
the energy produced. Even the process which Dr. Unwin
calls ‘human entropy’ promises no ethical improvement —
only increasing refinement and accuracy of thought and its
expression. Hitherto, as history shows, sexual restraint
has had the following results. The moral life has been
made possible and some at least of this potential good has
been actualized. Meanwhile, however, in the process of
creating the potentiality for good, much evil has invariably
been produced. Our problem is to discover a way to
eliminate that evil, a way to direct all the energy produced
by sexual restraint along desirable channels.

In the preceding chapters I have described the kind of
political, economic, educational, religious and philosophical
devices that must be used if we are ever to achieve the
good ends that we all profess to desire. The energy
created by sexual restraint is the motive power which
makes it possible for us to conceive those desirable ends
and to think out the means for realizing them. We see,

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ETHICS

then, that the particular problem of moralizing the energy
produced by continence is the same as the general problem
of realizing ideal ends. This being so, it is unnecessary
for me to discuss it any further. The matter can be summed
up in a couple of sentences. The third and only satisfactory
solution of the problem of sex is that which combines
the acceptance, at least by the ruling classes, of pre-nuptial
chastity and absolute monogamy with complete legal
equality between women and men and with the adoption
of a political, economic, educational, religious, philosophical
and ethical system of the kind described in this book.

I have discussed the problem of good and evil on the
plane of the body and the problem of good and evil in
relation to sex, as manifested on all the planes of being.
We must now consider good and evil on the plane of the
emotions. There is very little that need be said in this
context. All the familiar deadly sins are the product of
separate emotions. Anger, envy, fear — these insist on the
various aspects of our animal separateness from one
another. Sloth exists on all the planes, and can be physical,
emotional or intellectual. In all its forms sloth is a kind
of negative malignity — a refusal to do what ought to be
done.

Some vices are animal, some are strictly human. The
human vices, which are in general the most dangerous,
the most fruitful in undesirable results, are the various
lusts for power, social position and ownership. Pride,
vanity, ambition and avarice are attachments to objects of
desire which have existence only in human societies. Being
completely dissociated from the body, such vices as lust
for power and avarice are able to manifest themselves in
a bewildering variety of forms and with an energy that is
immune from the satiety which occasionally interrupts all
physical addictions. The permutations and combinations
of lust or of gluttony are strictly limited and their mani-

319

ENDS AND MEANS

festations are as discontinuous as physical appetite. It is
far otherwise with the lust for power or the lust for
possessions. These cravings are spiritual, therefore are
unremittingly separative and evil; have no dependence on
the body, therefore can assume almost any form.

Under the existing dispensation, popular morality does
not condemn the lust for power or the craving for social
pre-eminence. European and American children are
brought up to admire the social climber and worship his
success, to envy the rich and eminent and at the same
time to respect and obey them. In other words, the two
correlated vices of ambition and sloth are held up as
virtues. There can be no improvement in our world until
people come to be convinced that the ambitious power-
seeker is as disgusting as the glutton or the miser — that
‘the last infirmity of noble mind’ is just as much of an
infirmity as avarice or cruelty (with one or both of which,
incidentally, it is very often associated), just as squalidly an
addiction, on its human plane, as any physical addiction
to drink or sexual perversion.

The human or spiritual vices are the most harmful in
their results and the hardest to resist. (La Rochefoucauld
remarks that men frequently desert love for ambition, but
very rarely desert ambition for love.) Furthermore, their
spiritual nature makes it hard for them to be distinguished,
in certain of their manifestations, from virtues. This
difficulty becomes particularly great when power, wealth
and social position are represented as being means to
desirable ends. (In the story of the temptation in the
wilderness, Satan attempts to confuse the moral issue in
precisely this way.) But good ends, that is to say a state
of greatest possible unification, can be achieved only by
the use of good, that is to say of intrinsically unifying
means. Bad means — activities, in other words, that pro¬
duce attachment and are intrinsically separative — cannot

320

ETHICS

produce unification. The lust for power is essentially
separative; therefore it is not by indulging this lust that
men can achieve the good results at which they profess to
aim. The political techniques by means of which ambition
can be restrained have been discussed in the chapter on
Inequality; the educational and religious techniques, in the
two succeeding chapters. We cannot expect that any of
these techniques will be very successful, so long as ambition
continues to be popularly regarded, as it is at present, as
a virtue that should be implanted in the growing child
and carefully fostered by precept and example.

We have now to consider good and evil as manifested
upon the intellectual plane. Intelligence, as we have seen,
is one of the major virtues. Without intelligence, charity
and the minor virtues can achieve very little.

Intelligence may be classified as belonging to two kinds,
according to the nature of its objects. There is the intelli¬
gence which consists in awareness of, and ability to deal
with, things and events in the external world ; and there is
the intelligence which consists in awareness of, and ability
to deal with, the phenomena of the inner world. In other
words, there is intelligence in relation to the not-self
and there is intelligence in relation to the self. The com¬
pletely intelligent person is intelligent both in regard to
himself and to the outer world. But completely intelligent
people are unhappily rare. Many men and women are
capable of dealing very effectively with the external world
in its practical, common-sense aspects, and are at the same
time incapable of understanding or dealing with abstract
ideas, logical relations or their own emotional and moral
problems. Others again may possess a specialized com¬
petence in science, art or philosophy and yet be barbarously
ignorant of their own nature and motives and quite in¬
competent to control their impulses. In popular language,
‘a philosopher’ is a man who behaves with restraint and
X 321

ENDS AND MEANS

equanimity — one who loves wisdom so much that he
actually lives like a wise man. In modem professional
language a philosopher is one who discusses the problems
of epistemology. It is not thought necessary that he
should live like a wise man. The biographies of the
great metaphysicians often make extremely depressing
reading. Spite, envy and vanity are only too frequently
manifested by these professed lovers of wisdom. Some
are not even immune from the most childish animalism.
Nietzsche’s biographers record that, at the time when he
was writing about the Superman, he was unable to control
his appetite for jam and pastry; whenever, in his mountain
retreat, a hamper of good things arrived for him from
home, he would eat and eat until he had to go to bed with
a bilious attack. Kant had a similar passion for crystallized
fruit and, along with it, such an abhorrence for sickness
and death that he refused to visit his friends when they
were ill or ever to speak of them once they had died. In
later life, moreover, he claimed a kind of infallibility,
insisting that the boundaries of his system were the limits
of philosophy itself and resenting all attempts by other
thinkers to go further. The same childish self-esteem is
observable in Hegel and many other thinkers of the
greatest intellectual power. Such men are highly intelligent
in certain directions, but profoundly stupid in others.
This stupidity is, of course, a product of the will. In¬
telligent fools are people who have refused to apply their
intelligence to the subject of themselves. There is also
such a being as a wise fool. The wise fool is one who
knows about himself and how to manage his passions and
impulses, but who is incompetent to understand or deal
with those wider, non-personal problems which can be
solved only by the logical intellect. The wise fool does
less harm than the intelligent fool and is personally capable
of enlightenment. The intelligent fool, who has no

322

ETHICS

knowledge of, or control over, himself, cannot achieve
enlightenment so long as he remains what he is. However,
if he so wishes, he can cease to be an intelligent fool and
become an intelligent wise man. An intelligent wise man
is capable not only of achieving personal enlightenment,
but also of helping whole societies to deal with their
major problems of belief and practice. Under the present
dispensation, the educational system is designed to pro¬
duce the greatest possible number of intelligent fools. We
inspire children with the wish to be intelligent about the
phenomena of the external world and about abstract ideas
and logical relations; at the same time we teach them the
techniques by which this wish can be gratified. Meanwhile,
however, we make very little effort to inspire them with
the wish to be intelligent about themselves and, on the
rare occasions when we do make this effort, we provide
them with no devices for training the inward-turning
intelligence to perform its task efficiently.

One cannot deal intelligently with any matter about
which one is ignorant. If one is to deal intelligently with
oneself one must be aware of one’s real motives, of the
secret sources of one’s thoughts, feelings and actions, of
the nature of one’s sentiments, impulses and sensations and
of the circumstances in which one is liable to behave well
or badly. In general, it may be said that, on the intellectual
plane, good is that which heightens awareness, especially
awareness of oneself. No self can go beyond the limits
of selfhood, either morally (by the practice of the virtues
that break attachment) or mystically (by direct cognitive
union with ultimate reality), unless it is folly aware of
what it is, and why it is what it is. Self-transcendence is
through self-consciousness. A human being who spends
most of his waking life either day-dreaming, or in a state
of mental dissipation, or else identifying himself with
whatever he happens to be sensing, feeling, thinking or

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ENDS AND MEANS

doing at the moment, cannot claim to be fully a person.
McTaggart has objected that ‘to call a conscious being a
self (or personality) only when it was self-conscious would
involve that each of us would gain and lose the right to
the name many times a day/ Moreover, he adds, there is
‘a more serious difficulty/ We are invited to define
personality as being conscious of self. And consciousness
of self is a complex characteristic which can be defined
only when it is known what we mean by a self. There¬
fore, if self means the same on the two occasions when
it enters into the statement, ‘a self is that which is self-
conscious,’ we have a circular and unmeaning definition
of selfness/ It is quite true that such a definition is
circular and unmeaning. But the facts of personality are
not adequately accounted for in such a definition. Per¬
sonality is not, as we have seen, an absolutely independent
existent; persons are interdependent parts of a greater
whole. In the common-sense universe, however, they
possess a relative autonomy. There are degrees in this
relative autonomy. Only when it has attained to the
highest of these degrees does a personality become able,
as all the mystics bear witness, to transcend itself and
merge into the ultimate impersonal reality substantial to
the world. To say that * a self is that which is self-conscious ’
is, of course, merely to make an unmeaning noise. But it
is not absurd to say that ‘there is an X (the totality of a
human being’s animal and conscious life) which emerges
into selfness, or personality, when there is consciousness
of X.’ That this definition involves each of us gaining
and losing the right to the name of a person many times
a day is no objection to the definition. Such happens to
be the nature of things. The greater part of the life of the
greater number of human beings is sub-personal. They
spend most of their time identified with thoughts, feelings
and sensations which are less than themselves and which

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ETHICS

lack even that relative autonomy from the external world
and their own psychological and physiological machinery,
belonging to a genuine full-grown person. This sub¬
personal existence can be terminated at will. Anybody
who so desires and knows how to set about the task can
live his life entirely on the personal level and, from the
personal level, can pass, again if he so desires and knows
how, to a super-personal level. This super-personal level
is reached only during the mystical experience. There is,
however, a state of being, rarely attained, but described by
the greatest mystical writers of East and West, in which
it is possible for a man to have a kind of double conscious¬
ness — to be both a full-grown person, having a complete
knowledge of, and control over, his sensations, emotions
and thoughts, and also, and at the same time, a more than
personal being, in continuous intuitive relation with the
impersonal principle of reality. (St. Teresa tells us that,
in ‘the seventh mansion,’ she could be conscious of the
mystical Light while giving her full attention to worldly
business. Indian writers say that the same is true of those
who have attained the highest degree of what they call
samadki.)

It is clear, then, that if we would transcend personality,
we must first take the trouble to become persons. But we
cannot become persons unless we make ourselves self-
conscious. In one of the discourses attributed to the
Buddha, we read an interesting passage about the self-
possessed person. ‘And how, brethren, is a brother self-
possessed? ... In looking forward and in looking back
he acts composedly (i.e. with consciousness of what is
being done, of the self who is doing and of the reasons
for which the self is performing the act). In bending or
stretching arm or body he acts composedly. In eating,
drinking, chewing, swallowing, in relieving nature’s needs,
in going , standing, sitting, sleeping, waking, speaking

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ENDS AND MEANS

keeping silence, he acts composedly. That, brethren, is
how a brother is self-possessed/

In the last paragraphs of the chapter on Education
I have described a technique of physical training (that
developed by F. M. Alexander), which is valuable, among
other reasons, as a means for increasing conscious control
of the body and, in this way, raising a human being from
a condition of physical unawareness to a state of physical
self-consciousness and self-control. Such physical self-
awareness and self-control leads to, and to some extent is
actually a form of, mental and moral self-awareness and
self-control.

Of the purely psychological methods of heightening the
awareness of self it is unnecessary to say very much.
Self-analysis, periodical analysis at the hands of others,
habitual self-recollectedness and unremitting efforts to
resist the temptation to become completely identified with
the thoughts, feelings, sensations or actions of the moment
— these are the methods which must be employed. If
they are not already known, they can easily be reinvented
by all who choose to think about the problem. There is
nothing abstruse about the theory of these methods of
heightening self-consciousness. The principle is simple.
What is difficult, as always, is its application in practice.
To know is relatively easy; to will and consistently to do
is always hard.

It is sufficiently obvious that the systematic cultivation
of self-awareness may as easily produce undesirable as
desirable results. The development of personality may be
regarded as an end in itself or, alternatively, as a means
towards an ulterior end — the transcendence of personality
through immediate cognition of ultimate reality and
through moral action towards fellow individuals, action

d}** *s *nsP‘red and directed by this immediate cognition.
Where personality is developed for its own sake, and not

32<J

ETHICS

in order that it may be transcended, there tends to be a
raising of the barriers of separateness and an increase of
egotism.

Under the Christian dispensation, personality has
generally been developed in relation to the prevailing
doctrines of sin and of personal salvation at the hands of
a personal deity. The results have been on the whole
distincdy unsatisfactory. Thus, the obsessive preoccupation
with sin and its consequences, so characteristic of Pro¬
testantism in the generations immediately following the
Reformation, only too frequently produced an obsessive
preoccupation with the separate self and its lusts for power
and possessions. Modern capitalism and imperialism have
a number of different causes; but among these causes
must be numbered the Protestant and Jansenist habit of
brooding on sin, damnation and an angry God, arbitrarily
dispensing or withholding grace and forgiveness.

It is interesting, in this context, to compare the orthodox
Calvinist attitude towards sin with that which was taken
up by such mystics as Eckhart or the author of The Cloud
of Unknowing. These writers did not minimize the signifi¬
cance of sin; on the contrary, they regarded it as the chief
obstacle in the way of the soul’s union with God. But
they saw that sin was the fruit of self-will and that self-
will, in Bradley’s words, ‘is opposition attempted by a
finite subject against its proper whole.’ The important
thing, they perceived, was to get rid of self-will and to
cultivate, as quickly as possible, a state of being, propitious
to knowledge of, and union with, ultimate reality. Such
a state of being, they found empirically, could be reached
by the practice of virtue and the raising of consciousness,
first to the level of self-awareness, then, by means of
meditation, to awareness of God. Obsessive preoccupation
with past sins, they perceived, could result only in pre¬
occupation with the self which they were so anxious to

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ENDS AND MEANS

transcend. For this reason there is no insistence in the
writings of Eckhart and the author of The Cloud of Un¬
knowing upon their own or other people’s sinfulness.
They do not talk about themselves as miserable sinners;
nor do they advise others to do so. They know, of course,
that men are sinners and that sin is a barrier standing
between souls and their God. Therefore, they say, men
should make themselves aware of their sins and, having
done so, proceed to stop sinning; after which they should
concentrate all their attention on God and ignore the
extremely uninteresting and unprofitable subject of their
past, sinful selves. ‘It is a great grace of God,* says
St. Teresa, ‘to practise self-examination; but too much
is as bad as too little, as they say; believe me, by God’s
help, we shall advance more by contemplating the Divinity
than by keeping our eyes fixed on ourselves.’ Modem
theologians, such as Otto, have blamed Eckhart for not
being sufficiently conscious of his sinfulness, and have
contrasted him unfavourably in this respect with Luther,1
who spent his early manhood in the terrified conviction
that he was ‘gallow-ripe.’ It is legitimate to enquire how
far this conviction of his own ripeness for the gallows
was the cause of that later conviction, expressed so forcibly
a few years later, that the German peasants were ripe for
the gallows and deserved extermination and enslavement
at the hands of the ruling classes. There is a logical and a
psychological connection between obsession with one’s
own sins and obsession with those of others, between
haunting terror of an angry personal God and an active
desire to persecute in the name of that God. At the risk
of wearying my reader, I must repeat, for the thousandth
time, that the tree is known by its fruits. The fruits of
such doctrines as are taught by Eckhart, the author of

1 See Mysticism East and West, by Rudolf Otto (New York,
1932), p. 129.

328

ETHICS

The Cloud and the oriental mystics whom they so closely
resemble, are peace, toleration and charity. The fruits of
such doctrines as are taught by Luther and St. Augustine
are war and the organized malice of religious persecution
and the organized falsehood of dogmatism and censorship.
On this point, it seems to me, the historical evidence is
clear and explicit. Those who consider that the meta¬
physical theories of Luther and Augustine correspond
more closely to the nature of ultimate reality than do the
theories of Eckhart, Sankhara, or the Buddha must be ready
to affirm the proposition that evil is the result of acting
upon true beliefs about the universe and that good is the
result of acting upon false beliefs. All the evidence, however,
supports the opposite conclusion — that false beliefs result
in evil and that true beliefs have fruits that are good.
What we think determines what we are and do, and con¬
versely, what we are and do determines what we think.
False ideas result in wrong action ; and the man who makes
a habit of wrong action thereby limits his field of con¬
sciousness and makes it impossible for himself to think
certain thoughts. In life, ethics and metaphysics are inter¬
dependent. But ethics include politics and economics;
and whether ethical principles shall be applied well or
badly or not at all depends on education and on religion
in so far as it is a system of self-education. We see then,
that, through ethics, all the activities of individuals and
societies are related to their fundamental beliefs about the
nature of the world. In an age in which the fundamental
beliefs of all or most members of a given society are the
same, it is possible to discuss the problems of politics, or
economics, or education, without making any explicit
reference to these beliefs. It is possible, because it is
assumed by the author that the cosmology of all his readers
will be the same as his own. But at the present time there
are no axioms, no universally accepted postulates. In

329

ENDS AND MEANS

these circumstances a discussion of political,, economic or
educational problems, containing no reference to funda¬
mental beliefs, is incomplete and even misleading. Such
a discussion is like Hamlet , if not without the Prince ot
Denmark, at least without the Ghost or any reference to
the murder of the Prince’s father.

In the present volume I have tried to relate the problems
of domestic and international politics, of war and economics,
of education, religion and ethics, to a theory of the ultimate
nature of reality. The subject is vast and complex; this
volume is short and the knowledge and abilities of the
author narrowly limited. It goes without saying that the
task has been inadequately performed. Nevertheless, I
make no apologies for attempting it. Even the fragmentary
outline of a synthesis is better than no synthesis at all.

330

INDEX

Abyssinia, Conquest of, 144, 201
Acton, Lord, 238
Albigensians, 246; massacre of,
284

Alexander, F. M., 223, 326
Allerton, Robert, 237
American Brown Boveri Cor¬
poration, 1 18

American Dental Congress, 259
Amritsar massacre, 18, 189
Anarchists, 61, 70
Ancon, Treaty of, 115
Anselm, 278

Antioch College, 169, 203; sys¬
tem of education at, 203, 204
Aquinas, 278

Arica, Tacna and, provinces of,
115, 116

Arnold, Dr., of Rugby, 187
Aryan race, 67
Ashburton, Lord, 116, 117
Ataturk, Kemal, 249, 250
Augustine, 240

Austrian government, 147; and
Italy, 155

Avalon, Arthur, 234
Aztecs, 241, 242

Babbitt, Prof. Irving, quoted , 247,
248, 286, 293, 299
Baker, Noel, 104 n.

Baudelaire, 308, 309
B.B.C., the, 49, 86
Bedlam, 142
Behanan’s Yoga, 234 n.
Behaviourism, 2, 19, 257

Belgium, 65
Beliefs, 252-302

Benedictinism, 132-135; and
revival of agricultural life, 136
Bernadotte, 149

Bethlehem Hospital, state of, 142
Bethlehem Shipbuilding Cor¬
poration, 1 18

Bismarck, non-violent resistance
against, 147

Black Mountain College, 80
Blake, William, Prophetic Books
of, 167

Boer War, 140

Bolsheviks, iron dictatorship of
the, 28

Bona, Cardinal, 292
Boulding, Kenneth, quoted \ 153
British Medical Association, 96
British Navy League, 119
Broad, Prof. C. D., 259, 260
Brunschvicg, quoted , 278, 279
Bryce, Studies in History and
Jurisprudence , quoted \ 57
Buddha, teachings of, 5, 21, 32,
57, 92> 93> I35> 208, 226, 227,
235, 243, 245-247, 249, 282,
291, 294, 297, 325, 329
Buddhist Lodge, 246 n.

Burtt, 268

Calvin, 240, 241
Campbell-Bannerman, 140
Catharists, 284

Centralization and Decentraliza¬
tion, 70-88

331

ENDS AND MEANS

Chapman, Dom John, 243, 292,

m

Chase, Stuart, quoted , 200
Chile and Peru, dispute between,
115, 116

Chinese, the, 91 ; pacifistic ideals
of, 91, 92

Cistercian Reform, 135, 136;
agricultural revival by Cis¬
tercians, 136
Cluny, 135
Cobbett, 79

Communism, 6, 20; Russian, 35 ;
and authoritarian state, 61 ;
violence of Communists, 67,
72, 124, 130; military organ¬
ization, 133, 145, 283
Comte, 228, 229
Confucianism, 91, 92
Council of Action, 152
Cr£billon, 273

Darwinism, 274
Dedk, 147

Decentralization, Centralization,
and Self-Government, 61-88
Descartes, 278
Dewey, Prof. John, 223
Dictatorship, 7, 19, 29, 57; mili¬
tary, 26; proletariat, 61, 63;
insecurity of, 64, 66, 67; suc¬
cess of, 72; and national
vanity, 97; the two Fascist
dictators, 103; and sport, 188,
250

Disarmament Conference of
1932-34, 1 18, 1 19
Divinism, 236, 237
Douglas, Major, 153
Dubreuil, Hyacinthe, 74, 75, 83,
84, 172

Duke University, 259
Durkheim, 94

Eastman, Max, 163
Eckhart, 227/1., 298> 3 27> 328>
329

Eden, Mr., and armaments, no
Education, 177-224
Egypt, 147

Electricity Board, 49, 86
Esdaile, surgical technique of, 259
Eskimos, 90
Ethics, 303-330

Fabians, 31, 86
Farming, ‘ dirtless, ’ 44, 45
Fascism, 6, 19, 32, 33, 34, 3<S 4°,
50; Fascist aggression, 65, 66,
67, 72; military organization,
133, 145; war against, 152,283
Fichte, 26

Finns, the, and Russian oppres¬
sion, 147
Food supply, 43
Fourierists, 61
France, 65

Franco-Prussian War, 95
Frazer, 37, 38

French Revolution, 100, 102, 144
Freudians, 177, 178
Frost, Bede, quoted \ 246 «., 293
Fry, Elizabeth, 143
Fuehrers, 88

Gandhi, 146, 147
Garibaldi, 155
Gaultier, Jules de, 206
Geden, Prof., 243
George, Rt. Hon. D. Lloyd, 152
Gericke, Prof., and ‘dirtless
farming/ 44
Gnostic sects, 226, 227

332

INDEX

Goebbels, 67
Golden Age, 1

Gregg, Richard, quoted \ 139, 15 1
Gregory the Great, 132
Gresham’s Law, 213
Griffin, An Alternative to Re¬
armament^ 55

Hague Court, the, 117
Halbwachs, 94
Haldane, 261, 262
Hamilton, Alexander, 109
Hammonds, 200

Hastings’ Encyclopedia of Re¬
ligion and Ethics , 292
Heard, Gerald, 123
Hegel, 6, 29, 58, 67, 171, 253, 322
Hinduism, 5, 92, 135, 146, 226,
227, 245, 246, 289, 290, 291,
294

‘Historicalness,* 66-69
Hitler, 19, 34, 61, 67, 92, 103,
112, 145, 171, 242, 250, 317
Hiuen Tsiang, Chinese pilgrim,
245

Holland, 65 ; crime in, 142
Hoover, President, 116
Howard, John, 142, 143
Hughan, J. W., 146
Hume, 267, 278, 284
Hungarians, 147
Huxley, T. H., 228

Ibn Saud, 25 1
Ignatian order, 133
India, 18; Amritsar massacre,
18, 189; British Conquest of,
27; pacifism, 92, 146; non-
co-operation, 147; religion of,
232~235> 243

Indians, Zuni, 20; Pueblo, 20,
21 ; American, 23, 27

Inequality, 161-176
‘International Police Force,’ 112,
113, 114, 118

Italians, the, 67, 155; governed
by Austrians, 155, 250, 251;
Mussolini, 19, 32, 61, 92, 155,
250, 251, 317

Jacobins, iron dictatorship of, 26,
28; leaders, 145

Japan, 81, 82, 92; activities in
Manchuria, 103 ; Japanese
Christians, 139; Japanese
Samurai, 182, 183; Bud¬

dhism, 243; Zen mind-train¬
ing, 251m

Jews, Hitler and the, 242
John of the Cross, St., 135, 290,
292

Kaganovitch, 83

Kant, Critical Philosophy of,
278, 322

Keith, Sir Arthur, 90
Kellogg, Prof., 266
Kiel, Treaty of, 149
Kierkegaard, 240
Kossuth, 147
Kretschmer, 165
Kshatriyas in India, 2
Kulturkampf, 147

Labour Movement, British (1920),
147

Labour Party, 112, 114
Lamarckism, 261
Lamettrie, 272, 274
Lao Tsu, 5, 91, 92, 226
La Rochefoucauld, quoted r, 320
Laski, Prof., 26, 48
Lassiter, General, 116
Lataste, Marie, 290, 291

333

ENDS AND MEANS

League of Nations, failure of,
108; refusal of America to
join, 108 ; a league of societies
organized for war, 109, 121;
League Covenant, 109, no,
hi, 1 12, 1 14, 1 1 5, 1 17; and
colonies, 120
Lenin, 61, 75, 171
Lestrange, Dom Augustine de,
130

Leuba, Prof., quoted , 236
Ligt, BartMemy de, quoted , 25,
139

London Passenger Transport
Board, 49, 8 6

Loyola, militarism of, 132, 133;
and non-attachment, 134; ex¬
ercises of, 135
Lynd, 78

McDonagh, J. E. R., 258 n,
Machiavelli, 6, 33
McTaggart, 295, 324
Maine and New Brunswick,
boundary between, 116, 117
Mallarm£, 286

Mandate System, 119, 120, 121
Marett, Dr. R. R., 6, 25
Marx, Karl, 1, 61, 62, 272
Mechanomorphic cosmology,
123, 124

Meyerson, Emile, 11, quoted \
12 /i., 253

Mitrany, Prof. David, 86
Monasdcism, 129; Benedictine,
132-136

Montessori, 181, 182; Society of
Germany, 185; activities in
Italy, 185, 201, 202
Morgan, Dr. A. E., 169, 202, 203
Mussolini, 19, 32, 61, 92, 155,
250, 251, 317

Nationalism, 26
Naval Conference of 1927, 118
Nazi creed, 26, 82, 130, 283
Nerciat, Andr6a de, 273
Netherlands, King of the, 116
New Brunswick, Maine and, 116
New Commonwealth, the, 112,

114

Newport News Shipbuilding and
Drydock Company, 118
Nietzsche, 6, 322
Non-attachment, 3-6, 8, 16, 21,
72, 128, 131, 134, 310
Non-co-operation, 147, 155
Non-violence, 70, 126, 128, 139,
140, 141-144, M6-149, 155, i56
Nordics, 242
Norway, 149

Noyes, J. H., 129, 130, 206

Oneida Community, 130
Otto, 227 n.

Owen, Robert, 129

Panglossian fatalism, 68
Paranoiacs, 70

Pascal, quoted \ 281, 304, 305, 306
Peace Pledge Union, 184
Pedro de Alcantara, San, 248
Penn, 27

Pershing, General, 116
Persians, the, and tobacco mon¬
opoly, 147

Peru, Chile and, dispute between,

115

Philosophic Radicals, 61
Pinel, 142

Planned Society, 31-55
Planned Society , 46 n.

Pogroms, 64

Port of London Authority, 49, 85
Port of New York Authority, 49

334

INDEX

Positivism, 274
Prison Discipline Society, 143
Prisons, 142, 143
Proudhonian Mutualists, 61
Prussia, Westerwald district of,
131

Psychical Research, Society for,

259

Psycho-analysis, 2
Pueblo Indians, 20, 21
Puritans, the, 182, 183

Quakers, 132, 133, 134, 249

Raiffeisen, 131
Red Indian problem, 27
Reform, individual work for,
126-160

Religious Practices, 225-251
Renouvier, 145
Rhine, Prof., 259
Risorgimento, 155
Robespierre, 145
Roosevelt, President, and techno¬
logical progress, 53
Rousseau, 165
Royce, 298

Russell, Bertrand, in, 181, 201
Russia, 19, 20, 34, 148; Com¬
munist Party in, 35, 82, 83;
agriculture in, 47; Trotskyite
opposition, 48 ; collective
ownership in, 50; birth-rate
of, 54; present Russian state,
61; Tolstoyans, 61; self-
government, 82, 84; Soviet,
82, 83, 163, 171, 181; Soviet
suggestion of disarmament,
1 19; threatened attack on,
152; aim of revolutionaries,
146; and Germany, 103;
Tsarist regime, 146; Finns

and Russian oppression, 147;
Stalin’s police, 155; Educa¬
tion, 185, 186, 203; anti-God
campaigns, 250
Ruysbroeck, 286

Sade, Marquis de, 6, 219, 270-
272, 309
Salpetri£re, 142

Sanctions, economic and military,
109, hi, 112, 118
Sankhara, 329
Schucker, Thomas, 239
Schweitzer, Dr. A., 299
Science, two tendencies in, 12, 13
Scott, Peter, 172 n.

Seabrook, W. B., Asylum , 142
Sedition Bill, 65
Selders, 104 n.

Shearer, Mr., 118
Sheldon, Dr. W., 165
Sin Wan Pao , 92
Smith, Elliot, 265
Smyth-Pigott, 239
Social Democratic Party, 147
Social reform, 16-24, 25-30
Socialism, state, 62, 85
Society of Friends, 132
Society of Jesus, 132
Spain, 18; Civil War in, 103,
156; Protestant heretics in,
139; Republic, 145
Spinoza, 5, 288, 306
Stalin, 34, 61
Stockard, quoted \ 164
Stoics, 5, 226, 277
Suttie, Dr., quoted, \ 180
Sweden, 149
Syndicalists, 61

Tacna and Arica, provinces of,
115, 116

335

ENDS AND MEANS

Tao Te Ching, the, 282
Tauler, John, 5
Tawney, 183, 209 n.

Technology, 8, 21, 42, 43, 53,
158, 160

Tillyard, A., quoted, 246 n.
Tolstoyans, 61
Traherne, 31 1
Trappists, 130

Treaty of Versailles, 112, 140

Union of Democratic Control,
104 n.

United States, 83; and dispute
between Chile and Peru, 115,
1 16; Anglo-American dispute
over boundary between Maine
and New Brunswick, 116, 145
Unwin, Dr. J. D., 90, 307, 311,
313-3 3i7, 318
Utopia, short cut to, 1, 25

Veblen, 22

Vergin, Dr., 316

Versailles, Treaty of, 112, 140

Violence, Social Reform and, 25-
30

Voltaire, 165

War, 89-125; nature of, 89-94;
causes of, 94-108; remedies
and alternatives, 108-125
War Resisters* International, 15 1
War Resisters League, 146
Weber, Max, 91, 183
Webster, Daniel, 116, 117
Wells, H. G., quoted, 178
Whitehead, Prof., 250, 294, 301
Willcox, Dr., and agro-bio-
legists, 44, 45

Wilson, President, Fourteen
Points of, 1 12

Yale Review, 86

Yang Sen, General, 92

Yoga, methods of, 233, 234, 247

Zaharoff, Sir Basil, 106
Zuni Indians, 20

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